don't eat alone

My nephew, Ben, turns twenty today.

On the wall next to the staircase in our house is our “Wall of Fame,” filled with pictures of friends and family, each photograph holding a different story. One of my favorites is now about ten years old. Ben, his brother Tim (sometimes called Scott), and I are all standing together in roller blades about to take off down the skating trail in San Diego. I’ve got another of just Ben and me that’s now nineteen years old. I went to visit Ben and his family in Akron, Ohio and they took me to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I’m holding Ben and he’s wearing his Cleveland Browns jersey. He has very little hair on his wonderfully round head (wait – that’s how I look now) and his eyes are wide with wonder and expectation.

The way life has rolled out, Ben and I have not had a lot of time together in the course of our lives. We have stayed connected, but have not known much about the details of one another’s existence until the last couple of years. So, even though I don’t have any good recent photographs of the two of us together, I feel closer to him than I ever have and that is thanks, largely, to the common love we have for good music.

Whenever Ben, Tim, and I have occasion to send a gift to one another, we send CDs. For a couple of Christmases we even gave each other the same records without knowing it ahead of time. This past Christmas, I tore off the wrapping paper to find a cigar box. Inside the box was this note:

“Uncle Milton, our gift to you this Christmas may be a very dangerous one! These four albums have the biggest affect on us in almost all our music, all done by the same guy – Mark Kozelek. We know you’ll love them! It may take some time (although we know it won’t), but give them a good chance because he’s the man. We love you so much Uncle Milton! We wish that we could walk to the beach with you and hang out.
Love, Tim and Ben”

How often do you get dangerous gifts for Christmas that aren’t a Red Ryder BB gun? (And Mark Kozelek is the man.)

I called Ben yesterday to wish him a happy birthday and we had a great, long talk. I was trying to make sure he didn’t have the CDs Ginger and I wanted to send, so I asked if he had any Patty Griffin.

“Scott and I just found her;” he said; “she’s amazing.”

Our conversation turned to her lyrics and her ability to infuse simple words with profound truth and emotion. Here, for example, is the opening verse of “The Rowing Song”:

as I row, row, row
going so slow, slow, slow
just down below me is the old sea
just down below me is the old sea

The melody is haunting, and she’s crafting a picture with words not so different from “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Then comes the next line:

the further I go,
more letters from home
never arrive

She breaks your heart never using more than two syllables. Ben and I talked about the power in her songwriting. I went on to mention my favorite Patty Griffin lyric, in a song called “It Don’t Come Easy.”

I began the line, “If you break down, I’ll drive out and find you.”
He finished it: “If you forget my love, I’m there to remind you.”

And we were both quiet for a moment.

We sent him two CDs by Pierce Pettis, another amazing singer-songwriter, Making Light of It and Everything Matters. I sent the second record because of one song in particular, “God Believes in You.”

When you start to doubt that you exist, God believes in you
Confounded by the evidence, God believes in you
When your light burns so dim, when your chances seem so slim
And you swear you don’t believe in him, God believes in you

When you rise up just to fall again, God believes in you
Deserted by your closest friends, God believes in you
When you’re betrayed with a kiss, you turn your cheek to another fist
It dose not have to end like this, God believes in you

Oh everything matters if anything matters at all
Everything matters no matter how big, no matter how small
Oh God believes in you, God believes in you

When you’re so ashamed that you could die, God believes in you
And you can’t do right even though you try, God believes in you
Blessed are the ones who grieve, the ones who mourn, the ones who bleed
In sorrow you sow but in joy you reap, God believes in you

Ben is no longer hairless or round-headed (as I am), yet he still has a heart full of wonder and expectation. I look forward to seeing how the story of his life continues to unfold, and am excited that I get to contribute to the soundtrack, among other things.

When I was his age, my connection to family was kept alive, mostly, by my aunt, Pegi, who would not let me go. At a time when I could only push away, she kept reminding me I could not afford to break the bonds that created me. She was right. Family ties are better these days and I’m caught in the wonderful irony that now my nephews are key players in feeding my sense of belonging in my family of origin and contributing to my soundtrack as well. It’s just like Pierce says:

let your love cover me
like a pair of angel wings
you are my family
you are my family

I wish I’d known Ben better when he was four, or nine, or thirteen; I didn’t. But we know each other now and I look forward to the days to come when we will put on some good music, tell each other what we missed, and dream about what has yet to be.

Happy birthday, Ben.

Peace,
(Uncle) Milton

I started my morning, as I often do, listening to The Writer’s Almanac by Garrrison Keillor. Though it plays on WGBH, one of our local NPR stations, I listen to it from the website because I can do that on my own schedule. Along with a poem, Keillor gives a quick rundown of some of the happenings on this particular day, Here’s one of the things he said:

“On this day in 1923, Robert Frost’s poem, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ was published in the New Republic magazine. It was Frost’s favorite of his own poems, and he called it, ‘My best bid for remembrance.’

“Though it’s a poem about winter, Frost wrote the first draft on a warm morning in the middle of June. The night before he had stayed up working at his kitchen table on a long, difficult poem called ‘New Hampshire’ (1923). He finally finished it, and then looked up and saw that it was morning. He’d never worked all night on a poem before. Feeling relieved at the work he’d finished, he went outside and watched the sunrise.

But while he was outside, he suddenly got an idea for a new poem. So he rushed back inside his house and wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” in just a few minutes. He said he wrote most of the poem almost without lifting his pen off the page.”

He went on to recite the poem, which I print here because it’s one of my favorites.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

One of the reasons the poem sticks with me is it was the subject of my first big research paper in college, and my first real venture into analyzing a poem. I look back on that experience as the place where I became infected by poetry; I’ve never recovered.

My hours in the library reading commentaries on Frost’s work led me to people who saw in these words traces of solstice, suicide, and Santa Claus. I don’t remember what I ended up saying about the poem. I do remember working hard to learn it by heart (I still have most of it) and I know I keep coming back to it and finding different things: sometimes I’m struck by the beauty of the moonless night; sometimes, that the owner of the land is not the one appreciating it; sometimes,, the curiosity of the horse; sometimes the impending pressure of promises still unfulfilled.

I did not know Frost had written it so quickly until today.

In June of 1990, nearly seventy years after Frost wrote at his breakfast table, I was packing up to drive to Fort Worth after spending a couple of days writing with my friend Billy. We were working on songs for youth camp with my kids. We all knew this was going to be my last camp because Ginger and I were headed to Boston. While Billy was in the shower, I wrote these words in about the time it took Frost to paint his snowy picture:

If there was a place that felt like home, would you go there?
If there was a chance that you could know love, would you try?
It there was a dream that would come true, would you fall asleep?
If there was someone to dry your tears, would you cry?

Come and see, come and see
Take and eat, come and see

If there was a voice that would call your name, would you answer?
If there was a friend who would never leave, would you stay?
If there was a heart that would break for you, would you fall in love?
If there was someone who was listening, would you pray?

Come and see, come and see
Take and eat, come and see

I handed him the lyric when he got out of the shower and while I was cleaning up he wrote the melody. Eventually, it even made it on one of Billy’s records. Some of the stuff we wrote feels like history to me; this one has stayed alive.

Yesterday afternoon late, our friend Janet called asking if she, her daughter, their two dogs, and pet mouse could spend the night. They are moving to San Francisco this week. Everything was loaded into the Family Truckster and they needed to feel as if their journey had begun, rather than spending another night in the old house. Yes is always the answer to anyone who wants to crash here, so we had a slumber party last night with our little menagerie. As I’m writing, they have just shuffled off to Buffalo, the next stop on their journey west.

Over coffee this morning, Janet and I talked about new beginnings. For the first time in twenty years ministry is not her job. No one in San Francisco knows her; she is going with a clean slate: miles to go, but few promises to keep. She and Christine are on a road trip without reservations, knowing only the address they are driving toward. That’s enough to start a new life.

I watched them drive off and am left with memories and empty spaces. At least once every year in the ten years of Janet’s pastorate, I filled the pulpit as a guest preacher. When we were all together at the church in Winchester, Dan, her son, and I were the cooks for the annual Easter Pancake Breakfast. Fajitas and Ritas in Quincy will notice a drop in sales because Janet and Ginger won’t be making their regular visits.

Goodbye, my friend. Go, in peace.

I’ve always been puzzled, haunted, and somehow comforted by one of the lines in “Come and See.” On the cusp of one of the biggest goodbyes of my life, I wrote, “If there was a friend who would never leave, would you stay?” My life is. in some sense, a chain of goodbyes, an ongoing sequence of separation from those I most dearly love. Geography, however, is not the final word. I have left friends and they have left me, yet – thank God – we have still found ways to stay with each other in most cases. We have kept our promises even across the miles and it sucks not to be closer.

The promises we keep to one another as friends are not about obligation or duty. They are the essence of what holds us together against the centrifugal force of existence that scatters us every which way. Here in the dark, we can still find each other across the miles. Come and see.

Peace,
Milton

Packing up the youth group to go skiing is easier here in New England than it was in Texas. For one thing, Maine is a hell of a lot closer to Marshfield than Colorado was to Fort Worth; for another, the vans come equipped with DVD players these days.

We weren’t even through the city before the movie was on and I could hear the simple piano intro that captures me every time I hear it. Then the voices joined:

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

I was driving the van with the musical-theater kids who are getting ready for their Spring Show, Randumb Axe 5 (that’s Random Acts to you and me) and a couple of the RENT songs are in the show. But their connection with the movie runs deeper than that; they have been captured by the film since it came out at Christmas. Jane – the same girl who broke her arm on the trip – has been completely captured by the musical. And I can see why. It moves me, too. I’m sure I’m not alone as one who has found a way to work the lyric to “Seasons of Love” into a sermon (picking up where we left off):

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?
How about love? How about love?
How about love? Measure in love

The way a car DVD player works is the sound fills up the car, but the images can only be seen by those in the back seat. I could only hear the music and the audible responses of my passengers, all but one of them seniors. This was the third trip to Maine I’d taken with most of the kids. We’ve skied the same mountain and stayed at the same place, the Sunday River Inn, which is run by Steve and Peggy Wight. The inn is a step back in time. In an area fast filling up with condos and luxury hotels, theirs is a family style lodge, with some private rooms upstairs, dorm rooms downstairs, and a dining room and common room – with giant fireplace – on the main floor. Everyone is expected to be together. We all brought out books into the common room to read by the fire and ended up in unexpected conversations with the other guests.

There was one big change this year: the Wights are selling the inn and retiring from their career of hospitality. They are ready to measure their lives in other ways besides meals, towels, logs on the fire, and inches of snow on the mountain. It will require a change for anyone who is used to going to the inn because the person who buys it at today’s prices will probably not be able to run the same kind of show. The seasons are changing, just as they are with our youth group.

The recurring musical connector in the movie is a chorus that says:

There’s only us; there’s only this
Forget regret or life is yours to miss
No other road, no other way
No day but today

The words and music filled the car like pure oxygen. When we stopped for dinner they were energized by the sense of urgency and community the movie so beautifully conveyed. They were lifelong friends watching a movie about friends at the end of life all coming to the same conclusion:

There’s only now; there’s only here
Give in to love or live in fear
No other path, no other way
No day but today

Ginger and I saw RENT when the first road company – which was the original cast who are also in the movie – came to Boston. Our friend Patty took us as a Christmas present. The things I felt that night came back as I listened to the movie as we made our way up I-95. I was once more taken by such a story of hope told in the midst of such seeming hopelessness. The eight friends clung to each other in the present tense because what they had done in the past had cut their futures short. Yet, they were not hanging on in desperation; they were relishing the moment. “No day but today” was not a statement of resignation, but of gratitude.

Yes, the characters were full of contradictions and made choices I wished they could have done differently, and I loved their spirit: give into love or live in fear.

Both churches that Ginger and I are involved in are in the process of “visioning.” (I have to say here how much I hate turning nouns into verbs.) We started with the US Congregational Life Survey, a nationally used instrument to give us some data about how we view ourselves. At my church, we are now in the middle of muddling through the stack of statistics we were sent by the survey folks. The graphs and charts are helpful to a point, but they feel without context to me because there are no stories attached. We are all sitting in a circle, looking at photocopied pages, waiting for them to tell us where to go next when what we need most to do is put down the papers and ask and answer the question ourselves.

There’s only now, there’s only this; no day but today.

It’s Parker Palmer’s theme as well. We have come up with all sorts of ways to quantify success, to show what we are achieving and what we think we are making, but we are losing our sense of context: our connection to creation and to community. We are so frightened of failure that we have lost sight of ourselves for fear we don’t measure up.

Give in to love or live in fear; no day but today.

We don’t measure up and we don’t have to because success is not the measure, neither is wealth, or perfection, or effort or ability. “You are loved, you are loved, you are really loved,” as Victoria Williams sings to a different melody than the cast of RENT, neither one of whom is singing an original song. It’s as old as creation and as fresh as the sparkle in the eyes of my seniors. Like the man said,

“Consider the lilies. . ..”

Peace,
Milton

What makes a day significant?

Yesterday was John Irving’s birthday, Texas Independence Day, and my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was also the day my mother traveled to MD Anderson Hospital for her check-up to hear she is cancer free and discharged back to her primary doctor for future follow up. Yesterday was also the day David Letterman said, “Bush is in India. He keeps asking when they’re going to that “new deli” he’s heard so much about.”

March Second was an important day.

Today, March Third, is Alexander Graham Bell’s birthday. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be able to receive all the calls I’m going to get from frantic teenagers asking last minute questions before we leave on our church ski weekend this evening. It’s also Ira Glass’ birthday. He’s the host of This American Life on NPR, a wonderful radio magazine that simply lets people tell their stories and finds the connections between them. Talking about everything from death to donuts, he has a marvelous way of showing how the major themes of life play out in our daily existence. (I know all these birthdays because I read The Writer’s Almanac website, by the way.)

In the Brasher-Cunningham household, March Third is The Day of Gifts For No Reason. I love this day. Going back to the early days of our relationship and the first March Third we knew each other, I gave Ginger a theology book, a CD, and flowers because I had never dated anyone to whom I could give all three. She was the whole package. Still is. I’ve continued the tradition every year (except for the one year I forgot – that still hurts me) and today remains a significant day not because we were told it was, but because we have infused it with meaning.

This year, the book was The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, the CD was Putamayo’s Brazilian Lounge, and the flowers were a mix of yellow tulips and purple and yellow irises. All three represent things that both feed Ginger and express who she is. All three represent how much she matters to me.

March Third is a significant day.

Days that matter don’t stand alone; you have to get ready for them. When our friend Jay started working for the American Heart Association here in Boston as the Gala Coordinator, I thought a gala was a one night deal where you invited a bunch of rich people, told them to stuff their pockets with money, and then showed them a good time so they’d give all that money to heart research. I was wrong. Jay spent all year creating his significant day. Rather than being one day out of the ordinary, the Gala became The Day: an emblem of all the ordinary days that had led up to it. The fundraising and research went on everyday; the Gala was when it was celebrated.

In church life, the two Sundays with the biggest crowds are the Sunday before Christmas and Easter Day. You can count on the church being packed with folks you haven’t seen since that last Big Day. In ministerial jargon, they’re known as the “C & E Crowd.” I’m glad when anyone shows up at church for whatever reason and I’m sad for them because I think they can only glimpse the significance of the day – and the church – by being there only for the culmination of all the ordinary days that led up to that moment.

Some days we see coming; some days are anniversaries of things yet to come. In John Irving’s wonderful novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen spends much of the book practicing for a moment he believes is coming, though he doesn’t really know what or when it will be. He just knows to live everyday as if it were going to be The Day. In one of my favorite poems, W. S. Merwin writes about an ultimate anniversary:

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

I am intrigued by the idea of what today might become. When I look back on today, a year or a lifetime from now, what will I remember? Will this be the day that one of the kids on the ski trip comes to a deeper understanding of her faith? Will this be the day I begin to get a clearer view of what the next chapter of my life is going to look like?

What will today become? How will it be remembered?

Most significant anniversaries point to joy, accomplishment, or tragedy: July 4, December 25, September 11. When histories are written, time is too often marked by wars and the lives of the leaders who caused them. I remember sitting in history classes wondering what everyday people were doing while their kings and presidents were spanning the globe, living out the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Most people were living their lives, working, cooking, loving, and marking their days with things that would not be remembered much beyond their circle of friends and family.

Bush is in Pakistan today. All the news outlets are making a big deal out of his trip, but a year from now – hell, a week from now – no one will remember today as the day he went to Islamabad. A year from now — and a lifetime from now, I will remember today as the day I gave Ginger a book, a CD, and a vase full of tulips and irises for no other reason than I love her with all of my heart. She will remember as well.

That, my friends, is history in the making.

Peace,
Milton

NOTE: I’m skiing with the kids until Sunday; I won’t write tomorrow, but you will hear from me for the rest of the Lenten season.