don't eat alone

I got to participate in my first Portuguese pun today.

Robert, the chef, likes to say, “Obrigado too much” when he wants to thank one of the Brazilian folks for helping him with something. It caught on with all of us, so you hear it a lot in our kitchen. Thelma came up with the appropriate response: “De nada mucho.” Pedro is new to the kitchen. He was helping me out today and when he finished I said, “Obrigado too much,” but what he heard was “Obrigado tomate “(pronounced “tomach”), which meant, to him,” “Thank you, tomato.”

He answered without flinching, “De nada, cebola,” which translated means, “You’re welcome, onion.” And we all had a good laugh. Nothing like a good food pun to bring people together.

What I have done since I wrote last night is sleep, rather restlessly, and work. I nodded off on the couch downstairs shortly after I finished writing. Gracie woke me a little before seven, which gave me time to feed the pups, get dressed, and head for the kitchen, since I was supposed to be there around nine. I got the soups on the stove, set up the line, and then checked to see what needed to be made so I could put a prep list together. Before I left last night, Wesley and Wanderson cut up tomatoes for the Pomodoro sauce and onions for the French Onion Soup, so I had those to do as well.

In our jobs we all have things we do everyday that feel unusual, exotic, or even strange to people outside the field. I caramelize about ten pounds of onions every time I’m in the kitchen – more if we’re making soup. I sauté about five pounds of mushrooms, as well. Heck, I even fry pappadums on a regular basis. One of our favorite regular statements that comes up on Law and Order is when one of them says, “Check his luds.” (It means phone calls.) I may get to fry pappadums, but I never get to check anyone’s luds in my line of work.

As I was slicing the onions this morning, and in the kitchen by myself, I tried to think about why cooking is such a respite from my depression. Some of it is the task-natured focus of the work. I can get lost in slicing onions or mushrooms, in mixing sauces, or making potstickers. But it’s more than some kind of Zen focus on the moment thing. I think a big part of it is there’s always something to learn, or some discovery to be made – usually growing out of a mistake or a necessity.

I ended up making a lentil, black bean, and chorizo soup because that was what we had to work with. Eduardo and I bounced ideas back and forth until we came up with a recipe that worked. Robert asked me to make sushi today. I decided to do a tempura shrimp roll. What I could find to go inside the roll were roasted red peppers and fresh mango. And that’s what went inside. Some of the recipes are passed along (the apprenticeship side of things also speaks to me) and there’s always room to say, “What if we tried this a bit differently.” A seemingly minor change, addition, or even subtraction can make a dish a whole new experience, or at least bring new interest to something that has become too familiar.

Man, I wish the point of my food analogy was to tell you I changed a few ingredients and today was incredibly different from yesterday. It wasn’t. I pushed myself out of the house (and into the cold rain) because I just did. The sadness that rode home with me last night was still in the car this morning. I was grateful for the routine of my Saturday – get coffee, call my parents, go to work – because it helped me remember where to go next. My prep list did the same thing. Crossing things off the list did give me some hope and sense of accomplishment. The depression did not get the best of me: I made the soup, the sauces, the caramelized onions, the spiced walnuts. And I learned a pun.

I feel, with some sense of certainty, that people get tired of hearing about depression a good while before those who are depressed decide to quit talking about it. It’s not hard for me to imagine people reading about a paragraph or two into what I have written here and saying, “He’ s still depressed” and moving on to something else. I’m not sure I know where the line is between vulnerability and self-absorption. And I keep thinking if I will examine my life and talk about the details – even find new language for my experience – then things can be different.

When my mother was dealing with some difficult medical choices, she said, “I’m not naïve. I know doing this has its own set of issues. But I would rather live with that set of issues than the set I live with now.” I love the informed hope in her statement. The change doesn’t have to be of fairy tale caliber to be worth doing.

When the warden tears down the poster in Andy Dufresne’s room in The Shawshank Redemption to find an escape tunnel, part of the power was he had dug the whole thing with a rock hammer over years and years. He had gone through his prison routine day after day, making small changes where he could and carrying out a couple spoonfuls of dirt every time he went out into the yard.

Pedro works at least one other job that I know about besides working hard as a dishwasher and doing the prep jobs that are most repetitious and boring – and all for not much money. I would imagine one day looks a lot like the other to him. I don’t know any more about his life than he does mine. We each have our rock hammers, chipping away the best we can.

What else can we do but say, “Thank you, tomato.”

Peace,
Milton

Today has been a hard day, not because of anything that happened as much as reality is setting in: I’m in a downward spiral and I can’t seem to stop it. For reasons I don’t understand, I’m depressed again.

I had one particularly strange moment tonight. Friday is one of my full days at the restaurant. I was in the kitchen by 9:30 this morning and did not leave until a little after 8:00 tonight. The way I feel, it was the best place to be. I go in early to be the main prep guy, which means I’m there by myself. The pub opens at 11:30 for lunch, so there is a bartender and a server, but from nine to two I was the only one in the kitchen. I cooked bacon, cleaned mussels, made dressings and sauces, cut tomatoes and onions, and got the line ready for lunch. The others came in about mid afternoon and we got things ready for dinner. I actually had a pretty good time. A friend sent me her Portuguese phrase book after reading about the Brazilians I work with, so I’ve tried out a few new food words on them today. I think I earned a little Brazilian street cred.

The Masons made their monthly stop, which meant we had forty Iceberg salads to make and then entrees of either prime rib or grilled salmon. When it came time to plate forty dinners at once, we all chipped in.

Somewhere around dark, I was the only one on the line again. The room was warm and vibrant; there was good energy in the place. Yet, an overwhelming sadness fell on me like a heavy blanket. All of a sudden, I was weighed down by a palpable sadness and loneliness. I could feel the tears behind my eyes. I wanted to fall into a crumpled heap behind the counter and cry. I didn’t. I just stood there, hoping it would pass.

The loneliness is what scares me most. I knew I was coming home to a Ginger-less house tonight. She is away for a church thing. It’s been planned for a long time. For the love of God, I’m almost fifty; I ought to be able to come home to only Schnauzers every once in awhile. But, out of nowhere, standing there in the kitchen, I missed her. I felt alone and I needed her to remind me I was not.

I teared up because a song came to mind. In my mental iPod, Billy Joel began to sing:

when I look into your eyes and I see the crazy gypsy in my soul
long as I have you by my side I can feel my withered roots begin to grow
well I’ve never had a place that I can call my very own
but that’s alright my love ‘cause you’re my home

Ginger is home to me. There is no place, no town, no city, no country that makes me feel at home. I moved around too much to put much stock in geography. For five years now she has she had lived with my depression (for sixteen put up with a bunch of other stuff) and she keeps hanging on. I can’t imagine living these days without her. The thought of coming home to our empty house was daunting, but underneath that was a melody of hope.

if I travel all my life and I never get to stop and settle down
long as I have you by my side there’s a roof above and good walls all around
you’re my castle, you’re my cabin and my instant pleasure dome
I need you in my house ’cause you’re my home

Driving back to Marshfield after work, I turned on the Sox game hoping for some good news. It was the bottom of the second and we were already up 7-0. The Oriole pitcher was having a worse day than I was. The game was not very interesting, so the broadcasters had already started telling stories, which is why I love to listen to the games on the radio. Tonight I learned about Moose Stubing, who is the only person in history to never get a hit as a major league player and to never win a game as a major league manager. His failures were short-lived: he batted five times in 1967 and managed eight games in 1988, both with the California Angels.

I found a strange comfort in hearing about Moose. Part of me pictured him driving to Iowa to play ball on the Field of Dreams (it’s still there) where he could finally get a hit, or a win, or at least forgive himself. Part of me felt a sense of kinship, somehow; I wished I could call and see how he’s doing and never, never say a word about baseball. When they finished talking about Moose, I punched the CD button on my radio to see what I had left in there. It was Warren Zevon.

don’t let us get sick
don’t let us get old
don’t let us get stupid, alright?
just make us be brave
and make us play nice
and let us be together tonight

I turned it up and sang along. The second verse says:

the moon has a face and it smiles on the lake
and causes the ripples in time
I’m lucky to be here with someone I like
who maketh my spirit to shine

By the time the last chorus played for the third time, I was pulling into our driveway. Zevon’s waltz had danced me home in the darkness, even though Ginger is not here tonight. I opened the door to see the mail she had stacked, her jacket on the back of the chair, the note she had left me. I knew she would call before she fell asleep. I knew, even though she is somewhere else, she would still be my home.

The night is dark and my sadness sits on my chest life dead weight. But even in the dark, I’m working hard to move in three-quarter time, feeling a rhythm that runs deeper than darkness and truer than loneliness. Today was a hard day, but I made it home.

Peace,
Milton

I was supposed to go bowling this evening.

Bowling in New England is unlike bowling anywhere else, unless you happen to be in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Up here, we call it candlepin, which means – well, here’s how they describe it at Boutwell’s Bowling Center in Concord, New Hampshire:

Candlepin bowling unique to New England and parts of Eastern Canada was invented in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1880. Candlepins use a 4 1/2″ ball that is rolled at tall thin bowling pins that taper at the ends resembling candles hence the name. Candlepins are far more challenging than other forms of bowling with a perfect game never having been achieved. The high score to date is a 245, however the novice should be very happy with a 90 or 100 score.

To me, it feels like throwing a petrified grapefruit at a bunch of giant matchsticks. The game doesn’t make much sense to me. I was going because I am a mentor for one of the Confirmands at the Marshfield church. The message I got said six or eight of us were going to get together. How the rest of the evening went made about as much sense as candlepin bowling. We managed to get our signals crossed just about every way possible and finally ended up at the bowling alley in Scituate, only to find out it was league night and no lanes were available. While I was waiting for them to show up at the alley, I played pinball. I’m not much for video games, but I love flipping it old school. The machine I was on was one that gave ridiculous amounts of points. After two balls, I had 220,000,000 points. Of course, a free game was 550 million, but who cares – for a moment, I was the Pinball Wizard. I left one game in the machine because everyone finally got there and we decided to salvage the evening by going to dinner. The point was to spend some time together, so we accomplished our goal. No harm, no foul. I did miss getting to chunk grapefruit, though.

This afternoon, I hung out with one of the kids from the Hanover church who has a bunch of stuff going on in his family. I had planned to meet him at three; by the time my day went its own way, I had called him back twice to change the time and we finally got together at five. He and I went back up to the church office and put together the youth newsletter while we talked about his life and mine. Over the years I’ve learned a common task often helps break the ice and gets to the good stuff, rather than just sitting and staring. I’m not trying to be his therapist; I just want him to know I care and I’m listening.

Before I went to meet him I fixed some food for a group of ministers that Ginger facilitates monthly. My job is to provide the snacks. I took the opportunity to test drive a couple of Greek recipes I’m fixing for Ginger’s Sabbatical Sendoff Brunch this Sunday, along with some hummus and little bite-sized baked brie in puff pastry which I make every month – it’s their favorite.

The first acts of the day, after getting up with Gracie at 5:45 and then – later – eating breakfast with Ginger, was to clean up the house a bit (we had company coming), go through the recipes and make a shopping list for today and Sunday, and then head to the grocery store. Actually, I went to three because each store had at least one thing the others did not.

Today was kinder that its predecessor, weather-wise: it was partly cloudy and partly cool as well. And I was glad for the tasks that kept me moving because the change in the weather did not bring a marked change in my demeanor. It helped to have things to do, but – more than that – it helped to have people to do things for. One of the basic things that keeps me going is feeling like a contributor. That hits high on my hierarchy of needs. I understand it’s tied to my struggle to feel worthy; I also know that, sometimes, it works like a boost to get out of the pit and get on with my day.

The first time I went candlepin bowling, I threw the ball (actually, I sort of bounced it down the lane), hit a couple of pins, and then waited for the thing to come down, pick up the standing pins, and clear the fallen wood. It never came. In candlepin, you leave the litter in the lane and keep throwing – and you even get three balls. People who actually know what they are doing use the downed pins to knock down those left standing. It doesn’t really work that way for me. All I can do is throw the balls down the lane, one after the other, and then try to sift through the debris to see how I did. Then I punch the button and the thing comes down and resets it all.

Though I never made it to the bowling alley, my day felt a lot like a candlepin frame. I was throwing the best I could, knocking down a few things here and there, but mostly trying to steer my way though the stuff falling down around me to figure out how I was doing. By the end of the frame, I had spent time with one kid, had dinner with another, had fed Ginger’s group, and ended up taking Ginger a cup of coffee up at the church, since she had decided to work late while I was bowling. Then I followed her home.

When we walked out of the church, Ginger said, “I’ll call you when I get in the car so I can hear about your day on the way home because I know you still have to write.” And she did. I told her tales of shopping carts and candlepins as I watched the tail lights of her Wrangler wind through the woods. When you get to finish your day like that, who cares whether or not you got to bowl.

Peace,
Milton

We’ve had a run of beautiful early spring days that have lifted all of our spirits and made us think winter was gone, at least for this year.

It’s a lie.

I’m sitting in my office watching the flying saucer sized snowflakes swirl around, taunting the Schnauzers and me: there will be no walk to the beach today. Even though the ground has warmed enough to refuse the snow a place to stick, the flakes still fall with force, still hold their power. This year is like the others; it will be May before spring comes for sure.

Even before the snow, today had an ominous tone to me.

I woke up with a sense of gloom, unable to get enough light. I went through the house flipping every switch; turning on every lamp, hoping their collective illumination would be sufficient. It’s not. The darkness I feel is within as much as it is without. I’m standing, once again, on the precipice of depression. This time it caught me by surprise.

I’ve been fortunate over the last three or four months. I have not had a major depressive episode, which is unusual for the winter months. January has been among the cruelest to me over the past five years, but not this year. I have enjoyed remembering what it felt like bask in the light for an extended period rather than chase is before it disappears. On the heels of such a great day yesterday, I was not expecting a trap door this morning. Whether this is an anomaly, like the snow, or the beginning of a free fall is still unknown. Now is the time I have to use all the tools I have learned to chase away the darkness as much as I can. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. I’m both hopeful and wary in the same moment.

What makes me most apprehensive on days like this is I’m being dogged by A Depression for No Apparent Reason. Nothing is wrong, nothing has changed profoundly, nothing is hounding me and I feel depressed. What ever makes the chemical tumblers turn in my body is wreaking havoc and about all I can do is take my Celexa, write, be glad I’m spending the afternoon and evening in the kitchen, which has remained a depression-free zone, and hope that my body will run out of whatever is doing the damage, or replenish whatever it is missing. (I never was good at chemistry; I don’t even know how to imagine what is going on inside me.)

Instead of science, I run to poetry. I don’t need equations as much as metaphor. I need a vocabulary that gives expression rather than explanation. In a wonderful book called Poems to Live By In Uncertain Times, I found this poem by Robert Bly:

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large; tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Thinking about a bear showing up at the door helps me. I’ve been a bear fan for a long time; our house if full of them: stuffed ones, ceramic ones, cast ones, and carved ones. As I write each day, I have three that stare at me. One is seated with his arms around a hollow log, which serves as a penholder. One looks as if she is dancing, standing on one leg, balanced on a log, with the other leg and arms extended in joyful expression. She holds the coiled cords I need for my computer. The third stands, hands on hips and head slightly cocked, eyes sparkling, and mouth open as if any moment he will speak to me.

Looking around the room, I can count seventeen other bears (three of them Poohs), ten Spongebobs, one elephant, one Tigger, one Opus, one hippo, and one Velveteen Rabbit – all of them Keepers of Things That Matter.

I got an email note from an old friend yesterday in which he told me of a dream he had. Here’s how he described it:

In my dream, I took a trip to New Orleans. There was a vibrant but dilapidated street market scene on the outskirts of town somewhere, and a guide, a 30-something, large black woman who’d lived there all her life and had a sort of Caribbean vibe. The guide then took me and the group I was with on a tram of some sort toward the skyline of downtown New Orleans. The scene cut like a movie edit, and I was then on a horse, heading down the railroad tracks in a tangled, woodsy area, now actually somewhere in New Orleans proper. You were also walking down the tracks. We came to a rusted Quonset hut that had been built over the tracks, where they then turned into a dirt path. One end was wall-less, and the path led inside. We walked in, to the far end/wall, and broke into a two-part harmony, wordless singing that resembled something Turkish or Middle Eastern. The harmonies were strange and dissonant, often resting for many seconds on an odd combination of notes. This singing sort of unlocked the wall, which lifted away. Beyond it was more of the Quonset hut, this section built mostly of chicken wire and with windows that let a misty light through from the overgrown outside. Around the space, many things were hanging from the ceiling. These were all rusted, unrecognizable things salvaged and enshrined here after the hurricane.

Life is not an equation. Whatever my body is doing chemically is not the story of my life, even for today. As the snow falls, the animals huddle close, calling me to hear the strange harmonies that unlock walls, redeem destruction, and echo deep into the darkness.

Peace,
Milton

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. It will never happen again. The moment I’m waiting for is twelve minutes and twelve seconds after either noon or midnight on December 12 (my birthday) in 2012: 12:12:12 12/12/12.

This afternoon, I drove over the river and through the woods to get to Norton, Massachusetts, a town closer to Providence, Rhode Island than it is to Boston, to have my picture taken. Our church in Marshfield is taking pictures for a new church directory, but the picture taking times are during my burger flipping times, so Ginger chased down another church where Olan Mills was taking pictures and we drove over there to have our own unrepeatable moment captured for the book.

I’ve never been to Norton before. I didn’t even know where Norton was until about ten thirty this morning. As I drove in, I thought the same thought that crosses my mind any time I go into a new town: here’s a whole town of people who live meaningful and fulfilling lives without knowing me. There are counties, states, even whole countries where no one has ever said, “Man, I miss Milton,” or “I wish Milton was here,” or even “I wonder what Milton is up to these days.” And if they do talk about Milton, they aren’t talking about me.

Ginger got to the church before me, so she was standing in the foyer when I walked in. There were three or four other folks including the woman who was coordinating the appointments. She was a member of the church and, we found out later, one of the deacons. She was charming and funny and the perfect person to be keeping track of things. Ginger and I were the only two people there who were not church members or residents of Norton. I had fun listening to them talk about what was going on in their church and in their town. What was a town to stop in for a picture for me was home to them. Ginger and I both walked around to looked at billboards and see what kinds of brochures were on the tables. We caught a snapshot – an unrepeatable moment in their lives, but not the whole story.

I got my picture taken and drove out of town. No one noticed, other than my wife. I followed Route 123 (which I was driving on at 4:56) through Easton, Brockton, Abington, and Norwell, to get to Hanover for staff meeting. Don, Chad and I meet at our local Panera every Tuesday night. Now here’s a place where they know me. I’ve been in at least once a week almost every week since they opened. Since they always ask for your name when they take your order, most of the servers know mine. Mary always says hello when I walk in and then never charges me for my coffee. Andrea was behind the register tonight. When she said hello, I said, “What’s new?”

“We’ve got fresh chocolate chip cookies for you to sample,” she said and promptly went and got me one. Those folks in Norton have no idea who was in their town today, but if they ever come by Panera in Hanover, they’ll find out I’m huge here!

Don was late and Chad and I talked our way around the world – literally. He got to telling me about being in a small town in Germany one Easter. The tradition in the town was for the three congregations to each hold services at 11:00 pm on Saturday and then at midnight they all filed out of their respective churches holding torches, crisscrossed in the town square, and then entered each other’s buildings and held services in sanctuaries that were not their own. He said they did not speak as they shuffled past each other; they just moved from one church to another. It made me wonder how the tradition came to be. What was the explanation for the first time they did it? What words were said then that are now lost in the silent shuffle? What did it mean to them to carry lights and carry on in each other’s houses of worship? For Chad, not knowing what was going on, it was like being an extra in a George Romero movie. We both wished we could hear the story behind the shuffle.

Our Youth Ministry Team met tonight at Hanover, as is our custom on the first Tuesday of the month. This time we were joined by some of the folks from Pilgrim Church in Duxbury who are going with us, along with Ginger’s church, on a mission trip to Jackson, Mississippi in June. We are all in the process of raising money to get to Jackson, but one of the folks from Pilgrim has set her heart and mind on raising money to take to Jackson. She set a goal to raise $50,000 to take with us and the way she decided to do it is through a raffle. She started asking church members to donate prizes and ended up with everything form Red Sox tickets to tickets to fly anywhere Southwest flies, as well as about sixty other things. Our folks loved her heart and struggled with raffles not being a part of our church life. Then the woman started talking about what the money would be used for. Jackson was one of the places where people went after Katrina left them homeless and townless. Calvary Baptist Church was one of the places that gave people shelter and food. They also spent a lot of money helping people get on their feet. Their giving was more than tossing a couple of bucks in the plate; they sacrificed. Their church was also damaged and still needs to be repaired. The church is also working to help rebuild one of the towns in coastal Mississippi. Underneath all of that, it is a church that did not fly to the suburbs when the neighborhood “changed” but made a commitment to stay and minister.

When she finished talking, all of us around the table were a little teary. Someone said, “We have to tell that story. If people know the story, they won’t worry about whether or not it’s a raffle.” Until they hear the story, however, Jackson is just a name in a Johnny Cash song, just another town where no one knows them and they know no one. We all left the meeting ready to tell the story.

I hope it’s a moment we repeat over and over again.

Peace,
Milton

Saturday AOL played an April Fools joke on me.

Besides posting here, I send my Lenten Journal to a number of folks by email. I had it all typed and ready to send, hit the button and got a message in return that told me to go to KW: RATE LIMITS. I typed the phrase just as it was written and kept getting sent to a page on kilowatt-hours and electrical rates. I was stumped and I wasn’t laughing. I had no time yesterday to follow up, so this afternoon I sat down and, when I had hoped to be writing so I could watch the basketball championship, I tried once more to deal with AOL. I tried the online help, but could not get through. I dialed the 800 number and, after listening to a computer act like it was listening to me, I finally convinced her I needed to talk to a person and was put in an eight minute queue, hoping the next voice I heard would not be disembodied.

The first person I talked to talked me through dumping a bunch of stuff off of my hard drive and said everything would be fine. It wasn’t. I went back to the online help and got through, only to find I couldn’t converse for some reason. I picked up the phone again.

The second person I talked to should not be on a help line. He treated me like I was stupid. The reason I kept getting stuff on electricity was because I typed in KW, which stands for “keyword,” he told me as though I was the only one in the world who didn’t know that. When I said I couldn’t respond to the online help he told me it doesn’t work with Macs. When I said I wish that were posted somewhere he said, “Well, it’s common knowledge.”

“Could you be more dismissive?” I asked.

I don’t need this to be as painful for you as it was for me. The short version is I spent an hour and a half feeling dehumanized by a series of computer windows, computer voices, and computer experts. Though I finally figured out what was wrong, I didn’t deal with anyone who treated me as anything other than the problem. I was nothing other than the next one in line. Waiting in queue for AOL Help is something I will add to my definition of what Hell is like.

Ginger and I were in Boston again today. We had a few minutes to kill before our appointment, so we went into The Artful Hand, a wonderful art and gift gallery. ON the way out, I noticed a beautiful round glass platter engraved with words. I stopped and began to read.

“I am not a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew,” it began and went on to make a statement about the unity of humanity coming about when we all discard anything that makes us different from one another. That kind of sentiment drives me up a wall. It reminds me of going to a service at King’s Chapel in Boston, right after we moved to the city. On the front of the worship guide it said, “We are Unitarian in theology, Episcopal in practice, and Congregational in polity in order that we do not offend anyone.”

There are two things wrong with that statement. One, trying not to offend anyone is not much of a goal and, two, trying to please everyone is ultimately offensive. Trying to make us all the same works about as well as mixing all the watercolors together to make one shade: you end up with a murky mess that no one wants to look at.

At Bible study tonight we were looking at Jesus statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” We read the whole of John 14, beginning with Jesus’ words about his going where they would go also. The disciples were confused and didn’t appear to catch his drift, which had to be a bit disheartening to Jesus, considering the conversation was taking place just hours before his arrest leading up to his death.

“How will we know the way?” one of them asked.

“I am the way,” Jesus replied.

Growing up, I was told that verse meant Jesus was the only way to God. He was The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Anyone who didn’t believe that was going to hell, period. Christianity was the Truth. But over and over I keep finding out life doesn’t work out that way. Truth, in the best sense, is not propositional but relational.

I read some more of Blue Like Jazz today. Donald Miller talked about an experience he had in college. The school he attended did not have much regard for Christianity at all. In the midst of one of the school’s big party weekends, one of Miller’s Christian friends suggested they put up a confession booth in the middle of the school grounds, not for people to confess their sins, but for them, as Christians, to confess what had been done in Christ’s name that had nothing to do with Christ: the Crusades, colonial expansion, televangelists. They set up the booth and found their confession opened the door to talk about God’s love. Miller points out it’s not Christianity as a religion that matters (that’s what’s done the damage), but Christian spirituality, which is living like Jesus.

If the Truth is we have to believe one thing or we’re out, God ends up sounding a lot like the AOL guy who made me feel stupid: “It is common knowledge.” That’s not God. Jesus said, “I am the Way.” When I look at his character, I see someone full of grace and compassion, someone who noticed people no one else saw, someone who had time for those whom no one had time for, as well as those who did not have time for him. He wasn’t looking for people to sign a petition or join a movement. He wasn’t creating a club that could define itself by who it left out. He was demonstrating what it meant to be fully human, to truly live as one created in the image of God, which involved loving everyone and relishing in their differences.

I am a Christian and I notice the differences between me and those around me. On my best days, I see those differences as the things that give our life the color and texture God intended. On some of the other days, my judgment gets the best of me. Then Jesus says, “I am the Way – follow my lead.” When I hear him, I remember it was never about who gets left out; we are all invited.

Peace,
Milton

It was perfect.

Don was taking prayer requests before the pastoral prayer in our ten o’clock service. One of the men in the congregation, a retired surgeon who is full of both gentleness and whimsy, raised his hand. Don called on him and he stood up, his hymnal open.

“I wanted to make note of the hymn we sand this morning and these words,” he then read with great intentionality and drama:

“Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”

He sat down to both laughter and applause. Here in Red Sox Nation, the first day of baseball season is a day we notice, even if our beloved team has yet to take the field. The Sox web site asks how people think the Old Town Team will do this year. Forty-three percent say we going to win the World Series. Only eleven percent thinks we are going to do poorly. Our hopes are high; we’re ready, once more, to have our heart broken. We’ll watch every game as if it were the playoffs, talk about it every chance we get, and never stop believing until we are mathematically eliminated. And we love to write about it, too.

Tonight, as I was driving to youth group, I heard an interview on NPR with Tom Goldstein, editor and publisher of Elysian Fields Quarterly, a baseball literary journal. He read “Baseball Enlightenment,” a poem by John Poff, a former major league ball player. Goldstein also talked about his father lamenting the loss of beginnings and endings and the way in which one sport season bleeds into the next. John Ydstie, the host, agreed, pointing out that Opening Day was sandwiched between the two days of the Men’s Final Four, which eclipsed baseball’s beginning. No one noticed like they used to do.

He also asked Goldstein why baseball was the one sport with a significant literary legacy. The editor pointed to the pace of the game. Any other sport requires you pay attention all the time, he said; there’s no room for conversation. If you turn your head and the batter hits the ball, you can turn back to follow the arc of the fly and watch the fielder run to catch it. You get to watch the strategy unfold, watch the plays develop, even watch the manager go out to the mound and the team converse with each other. It’s also the one sport, he noted, where you, as a spectator, have time to notice your surroundings, notice who’s around you – the one sport where you have time to think and reflect. When there is time for conversation and reflection, there is time to write.

I’ve lost track of beginnings and endings in my life right now. One week bleeds into the next without much sense of what is starting and what is stopping. Monday is the beginning of the week for most folks and it is my down day, at least until it’s time for Bible study. Tuesday is a catchall; Wednesday I’m in the kitchen. Thursday I have a chance to catch my breath before the Friday to Sunday marathon. It is a hamster wheel more than a trajectory with any direction; I could begin the description on Wednesday as easily as Monday and come out with the same sense of timing. In the midst of this season, I have fought to find time for conversation and reflection, because I have been determined to write. Life is moving quickly; I want to remember who I am and what is happening. I also want to be able to notice moments like this one:

How Baseball Becomes the Beginning of Longing
By Kelly Terwilliger

The hum of the crowd
is a warm pool, and you wade in happily,
the green field below as smooth as a freshly made bed,
and the sky fading peach into the cooling
air, the lights so bright, so white they trick the eyes
into seeing the whole world sepia, like an old movie
steeped in the color of nostalgia, the smells
of hot dogs and popcorn clinging to the very air
and somewhere inside, you can still hear the smack of the ball
you can feel the arc it makes over the stands and the boy next to you
so wanting to catch it he brought his tiny red mitt to the game
just in case, and he tells you again and again how it would be:
the ball, so hard, so fast it could hit him in the eye and blind him,
would come sailing right between the two of you, and he—he would snatch it
from the air as fast as anything, and it would be his! And how bare
and pointless the evening turns when he knows it is too late,
no ball will come his way tonight and you will go home
and he will be empty-handed and this was in fact
the worst baseball game ever and now he isn’t even sure why
he wasted his time coming, and you climb
that hill with him, his head down, his sandals flapping and the air
clear and darkening all around you, carrying the moon on its breath
like a not-quite-ripe baseball, just out of reach.

The numbers at the bottom of the page on my Word document tell me my Lenten Journal is now over 35,000 words. In a little over a month I have written a small book, I guess, and, when I sit down to write everyday, I feel like the kid with the red baseball mitt waiting for the homerun ball to hit his glove and going home, after every game, with nothing more than the moon and the hope of next time. As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I know both the hope and heartbreak of next time very well and I must say familiarity doesn’t make it any easier. If the option, however, is to not take your glove and go sit in the bleachers, I’ll keep choosing to head to the ballpark.

Peace,
Milton

Carl and I were the only ones at the restaurant for most of the morning, which is usually the case on Saturdays. He is the function chef and I am the lunch cook. Carl does brilliant work in his kitchen. Not only does he make great food, he does it in a way that he can serve two or three hundred people at once and have them feel as though they ate at a good restaurant, rather than chomping on a rubber chicken. He is also as wonderfully odd as he is talented. We took a break about eleven and he said, “I love the way spring smells.”

The sentence just struck me funny. I understood what he meant: the air is full of new sounds and aromas and possibilities. I just thought he said it in an amusing way. Then he went on.

“I just feel better in the spring. Everyone gets better looking, even ugly people – especially when they’re driving.”

I laughed and said, “Yeah, we finally get to roll down the windows and sing along at the top of our lungs.”

I thought about his comment at different times and smiled each time I did. If life is a beauty pageant, neither one of us is going home with a tiara, so it helps us both, I suppose, to know there are moments in life when we all look good. To think some of my best moments are cruising along in my lapis blue Cherokee Sport with the windows down singing, “Tramps like us – baby we were born to run” at the top of my lungs is a pretty good thought.

I also think I look pretty good in the kitchen. It’s a place where I feel comfortable, where I feel creative, where I love to be. It always smells like a new season in the kitchen and you can sing there, too. I like dressing up like a chef as well. This weekend, Robert, our head chef, told me I could do my own lunch specials, so, since it’s lunch in the pub, I created a burger. I made a Guinness barbeque sauce to start with. When I assembled the burger, I put the sauce on the burger, then bacon, melted Swiss cheese, and then topped it with fried onion rings. It comes with fries and a pickle for just $8.95. It looked awesome and it tasted great. Tonight, I got to make sushi. I made a spicy tuna maki roll.

Robert’s the one who first taught me how to make sushi. As soon as I learned how, he started delegating and made me the sushi maker in the restaurant. His ability to affirm and encourage others and let them shine in his kitchen is one of the things he does best. He likes seeing us all look good.

Last night, as I was falling asleep in front of the television, there was some story about yet another award ceremony for actors. The clip I saw showed Dakota Fanning receiving a best something award. She was graceful and grateful in the few words I heard. She is fortunate to work in an arena that seems to thrive on handing out awards. I realize that often it’s the same six people who get those awards, regardless of the event, yet I still think it’s an amazing thing. A billion people around the world tune in to watch the Academy Awards. Is there really someone in Azerbaijan tuning in to see if Heath Ledger was going to win?

I wish there was a ceremony for Dishwasher of the Year. I would nominate Thelma.

What Carl loves about spring is the equality of it all, it seems to me. For a few moments, maybe even days, at the beginning of a season that is all about beginnings, we all get to look good without it being a competition.

I drove home tonight listening to part of the Men’s Final Four on the radio. Usually, I’m glued to the television for the last of March. I love watching the tournament. This year I have seen only part of one game – in a year many have said was the best tournament ever. As luck would have it, my drive home was between the two games, so all I got to hear was the sports guys talk way too much about, well, everything. To hear them, nothing in the world mattes as much as what is going on in Indianapolis this weekend. And it is important. – just not that important.

After a few minutes, I turned it off and started trying to think of what to write tonight, which led me back to Carl’s comment, and then I thought of a scene In Young Frankenstein where they’re trying to capture the Creature and have realized they can’t overpower him. So Gene Wilder, in a stroke of genius, says, “Hello, Handsome!” and compliments the guy into submission.

Along with my burger, one of the things on our menu tonight was a Chicken and Corn Chowder that Eduardo made. It was really good and we sold a lot of it. When the servers complimented the soup I said, “Eduardo made it” and they would then say something to him. I watched the compliments land on him all evening and I saw the way they relaxed him. He got better looking as the night went on. So did I. I loved the people kept ordering the burger and we almost sold out of the maki rolls I made this afternoon. I had fun today.

After eleven hours in the kitchen, there’s not much more to tell than that. We worked hard, we had some laughs, we enjoyed being together, and we looked forward to a season that promises a whole host of days where we all look good driving and singing. I think I may have to put the Springsteen CD in the car for the ride to church in the morning. With one less hour of sleep, I want to look my best, and I do, according to Carl, when I’m singing with the radio.

Peace,
Milton

It was a great night.

We went into Boston about two o’clock because we had to go to the doctor’s office before our evening could begin. Ginger and I are three weeks away from her sabbatical and the Trip of Our Lives to trace the steps of Paul through Greece and Turkey (thank you, Lilly Endowment). To be able to make that trip, we had to make this trip to get our vaccinations. Our nurse, Dale, was excellent both in the information he had to give and his gentle manner in giving the injections. From there we met our friends Cherry and Dell for coffee and then began our evening adventure.

In looking for somewhere fun for dinner, we happened upon Betty’s Wok and Noodle House across the street from Symphony Hall. It’s retro diner meets Asian-Latin fusion. The food was amazing (Juan-tons!) and our server, Michael, made it even more fun. We left, full and happy – they even kept our leftovers refrigerated for us until after the concert – and walked across the street to find our seats in the magnificent hall. The orchestra was tuning up.

There are a lot of great things to remember about last night, but watching and listening to Joshua Bell play the violin is at the top of the list. The piece was Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D. Opus 35. (Once again, I run into my ignorance when it comes to classical music: I thought Opus was the penguin from Bloom County.) Neither he nor the conductor worked from a score. The room filled with melody as the orchestra began, and then Bell made the carved piece of wood sitting on his shoulder come to life. He stood the whole time, moving his body in sync with his bow, occasionally wiping his brow with the cloth that hung on the side of the conductor’s podium. In the sections where he was not playing, he turned to listen to the orchestra in a way that showed he was really listening and not just waiting his turn.

I don’t know how much time passed – twenty-five, thirty-five minutes. The program notes pointed out that Leopold Auer, to whom Tchaikovsky dedicated the concerto when he wrote it, declared the piece “unplayable.” Though he went on to learn and perform it, Tchaikovsky carried the wound of those words for many years. I wish he could have been in the room last night to hear the artist we heard play it as if it were written for him, moving from the big forceful movements to the high, tiny, whispers of sound that even reached us on the back row of the second balcony. It was a great night.

And it had been a hard day.

Gingers father has worked hard his whole life. I love to hear her tell stories of his days as a milkman and then a route driver for Golden Flake potato chips. I can remember going to Birmingham after we first married and waiting for him to come home so we could go out and pick a snack off the truck. He retired several years ago, but got a call this week to ride a route with an old friend who is recovering from surgery and needed some help. Monday morning he left the house at 4:30 to meet the guy. A little after five, the man called wondering where Reuben was; he had not showed up. When she found him, he told her he had gotten turned around on a road he has driven most everyday of his life. Wednesday night he came in tired from work and talked about his exhaustion.

“I can’t believe I’m so tired after only one day of work,” he said.

“You’ve gone to work for three days,” Rachel replied.

“No,” he said, “today’s only Monday.”

Reuben’s work ethic, like his compassion, lies deep in his muscle memory. He is a virtuoso of daily life, a man who knows how to run the scales of existence and pull from them a melody of love and grace. He is a man who timed his delivery route so he could get to everyone of Ginger’s softball games and dance recitals, even as he made sure he kept his promises to keep the shelves full at the Piggly Wiggly. He is a man who, when asked how he is doing, answers every time with gusto, “Fine, marvelous, outstanding.” He is a man who has accumulated very little in his life and feels rich and content. He is a mountain of a man who is mostly gentle and kind stacked on top of each other. For his whole life, he has played a concerto of hope, finding ways to affirm and encourage those around him, convinced to his bones that God is holding him and will not leave him alone. He, too, plays without a score; he lives the melody.

When Rachel called the doctor to tell what had happened and to make an appointment, the doctor said, “It sounds like Alzheimer’s.”

Only a chilling silence can follow that sentence.

We don’t know, yet, exactly what is going on. Thanks to the ridiculous inefficiencies of our health care system, it will be some time before we know because they don’t have any appointments available. What I do know is I’m troubled by the strains that are beginning to break into our lives. Only last Friday I sat at the funeral of my friend’s father; today I’m worried about my father-in-law. I’m not quite prepared for this particular movement. There is no score, and I don’t know this piece by memory, or even by heart.

Living outside Boston while Rachel and Reuben are struggling in Birmingham makes it all even harder to hear. What carries this far, for the most part, is the pain. It is both a low and piercing note, full of questions and yearning. Here is a man who has composed a wonderful life; he does not deserve for it to be erased, measure by measure, in reverse. Why does it feel, sometimes if feels as though all of our lives are like Saturday Night Live skits: we don’t know how to write a decent ending.

We talked to Ginger’s mother on the way home last night. Reuben had a better day. He had already gone to sleep.

“What makes one day better than another?” Ginger asked after she hung up.

“I don’t know,” I said. And we drove home, her hand in mine.

Peace,
Milton

Ginger and I are going to the symphony tonight.

(Let’s see – I’ll take “Sentences that Milton Rarely Types for $200, Alex.)

One of the people in Ginger’s church was kind enough to give us her tickets since she could not use them – with a parking pass. According to the BSO web site, we will hear Emmanuel Krivine conduct Mussorgsky’s “Prelude to Khovanshchina,” Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35 (with Joshua Bell), and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 I have now said everything I know about what is going to happen this evening, and I have very little more to contribute when it comes to classical music in general. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s that I don’t know it.

When I think of Brahms, I think of lullabies, though I am hard pressed to hum any of his at this particular moment. When I think of Tchaikovsky, I think of “The 1812 Overture,” complete with cannon that we get to hear every Fourth of July here in Beantown. What I know of Mussorgsky is from my old Emerson, Lake, & Palmer records, where they did their version of “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

There. I’m done, at least for the most part. ELP’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” sent me searching for more Aaron Copland. The Elephant Man introduced me to Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” through its soundtrack. But I don’t know classical music because I didn’t grow up with it; I wasn’t trained to listen for it. Part of the reason is Bulawayo, Lusaka, and Nairobi didn’t have Philharmonics in those days. Part of it is my parents’ musical tastes ran more toward hymnal than highbrow. The folks in my church joke that I don’t need a hymnal on Sunday mornings. I know them all by heart.

In first grade I took piano lessons, like many people. I went through seven teachers in a little over a year. My last teacher came out to the car one day and said to my mother, “He has musical ability, but it’s not ready to come out. Do him a favor and me a favor and let him quit taking piano. His talent will come out in good time.”

The problem (issue?) was I had too good an ear. Rather than learning how to read the notes on the page, when my teacher stopped to correct my mistakes, I would ask her to play and then repeat what she had played based on what I heard. She figured it out when she played a mistake and I repeated her error. My mother let me quit and I asked for a guitar for Christmas – my ninth grade year. I’ve always loved to sing. Since most of rock and roll exists because of three chords (G, C, D), I had all the music I needed around me. My soundtrack had six strings.

My brother, who grew up in the same house and got a guitar the same Christmas, would tell this story differently. He became a professional musician. He learned to read music, to love the symphony and the opera, he did the work of learning to read what is still a foreign language to me, other than knowing Every Good Boy Deserves Favor.In college, I was learning to play Dan Fogelberg while he was performing “De Fledermaus.” It was not a matter of what we were exposed to as children, it had to do with the ears we grew and what melodies we allowed to take root in our hearts.

I love live music. I love the idea of being in a room where a musical event occurs that cannot be replicated and was not recorded; you were either there, or you weren’t. In rock and roll, those kinds of moments come when an unexpected guest walks out on stage, or some sort of interaction with an audience member changes the set list. Live orchestra is shooting of a different kind of live experience, one where everyone has practiced individually and rehearsed together to bring the score to life by playing the score note for note. But there is no such thing as a literal playing of the score; it must be interpreted. The conductor makes decisions about tone and tempo. The players bring their own style to their craft. And then there’s the challenge of playing together.

Acoustic sets have been stylish for some time now in popular music, where a musician forsakes the band and plays solo with nothing but guitar, as if the stripped down version of the song is the truest one. I can’t imagine a violinist, a trumpeter, or a timpanist making a case for a solo version of any of the pieces they know. (“Wait for it – my drum comes in every forty-five measures!”) The composers wrote parts that could come to life only in the context of community. They had to have the band to make the whole thing work.

All of a sudden I’m talking as if I know the difference between scherzo and shinola.

I wonder what the musicians car hear when they play. Do they have a sense of the entire orchestra at work? Do the strings hear more than strings? If one sits in front of the big brass does one holy hear big brass? Does the guy playing the triangle wish he had a microphone so he could hear himself? Do they have to play the notes and trust the conductor to tell them if they are making music? Do those who play supporting notes ever really get to hear the melody?

We’re off to the symphony. I’m going to sit in an historic room and let the sounds wash over me, hoping to find resonance, to grow new ears. I’m going to find beauty in the diligent work of the players and the conductor. I’m going to be a part of an evening I usually miss, to see a side of the world I don’t usually see, to give attention to what I usually let flow by.

That’s always worth doing.

Peace,
Milton