My friend, Mia, responded to my post, “re-member, then” with this comment and quote:

Your post made me think of a James Hillman quote – “our lives my be determined less by our childhood than by the way we have learned to imagine our childhoods”.

James Hillman is a new name to me, but he’s on to something.

Mia and I were a part of a group of folks who spent time growing up in Nairobi, Kenya and all attending Nairobi International School (now International School of Kenya). All of us are what they call “third culture kids“: people born in one culture, raised in another, and belonging to neither. Two years ago, thanks to the tenacity of our friend Martha, we all got back together after not seeing each other for thirty years. The reunion was full of healing for us all. I think it was one of the few times any of us had been in a room where everyone understood us. We are getting back together again this summer.

The over arching self-image of my adolescence that lives in my memory is I was a short, fat kid. Now, as an almost-fifty-year-old who struggles with my weight, I have often viewed my battle of the bulge as a life long war because I’ve always been chubby. I grew six inches taller in college, but I never got over feeling fat.

After we got back from our gathering, Martha sent my a picture she took of me in ninth grade. I remember her taking the picture. I am sitting in an armchair with one leg crossed over the other. I have on a sports coat, a pink shirt, a turquoise patterned tie that’s about nine inches wide across the bottom, and red socks.

Here’s the thing: I’m not fat in the picture.

It’s right there in all it’s Polaroid reality. I was a normal sized kid. I was short, but I wasn’t fat. Yet, somehow, the way I learned to imagine my childhood led me to grow up with a different picture in my brain.

In tenth grade, my family was on leave from the mission field and we lived in Fort Worth, Texas and I went to Paschal High School, my sixth school in ten years. My youth minister at University Baptist Church was a guy named Steve Cloud. He was everything I was not: athletic, tall, handsome, together. I was (felt) short, fat, and completely out of place. I can remember sitting on the edge of my bed at 3362 Cordone, looking in the mirror, and wishing I could be anyone else but me.

One day after school, I went by the church to see Steve. He called me “Flash.” He suggested we go out and shoot some baskets on the church parking lot. I am the world’s worst basketball player, but I went with him. One of my lame two-handed set shots missed everything and the ball rolled across the parking lot.

“You get it,” I said disgustedly.

I can still see him walking across, picking up the ball, and walking back toward me with the ball on his hip. He put his arm around me and we turned to go back to his office.

“Flash,” he said, “One day Trish and I are going to have a kid and I hope he turns out exactly like you.

That day, Steve gave me a way to imagine myself that helped me live through high school.

One of the images of my childhood that is hardest for me to shake is that love is earned. Feeling worthy of love has never come easily for me. As I have said before, one of my deepest fears is that I don’t belong. In both my head and heart, I can hear the voices of those, from Ginger on down the line, who love me deeply. I know I am loved and the imaginings of my childhood that Hillman points to tell me it’s all conditional because I haven’t done enough.

Then someone else left another e.e. cummings poem in the comments:

out of the lie of no
rises the truth of yes

I wonder sometimes what might have happened if Steve had not said that to me. But he did. In that brief moment on the parking lot the truth of yes found a foothold and hung on for my dear life, giving me a chance to grow into a different image of grace, love, and hope.

This past weekend marked seventeen years since Ginger and I met. I have been with her longer than I lived in Africa. I know most of what I know of grace and love because of the way she incarnates it to me. If life was about getting what you earned, I would not be lying next to her at night. She continues to give me new eyes with which to see myself.

And I need her to keep doing it because, Polaroid or no, the fat kid just won’t go away.

Peace,
Milton

One of my memories of teenage trips to Six Flags Over Texas was bridge made of barrels across some fabricated pond. The barrels meant each step had its own tilt: the walk was not straight or easy, but at least you had ropes along the sides to hang on to.

The last couple of weeks have felt like that barrel bridge for both Ginger and me, each day tilting a different direction than the one before, though the side ropes have not been as apparent. Most of the reason for the random pitch has been my life: there’s a lot going on. We are not deathly ill or facing a major life crisis. I have not felt significantly depressed in some time now, thank God. But the day in, day out, who’s in the hospital, what needs to get done, I have three meetings tonight circumstances of our existence, it all adds up.

On top of all that, instead of a New England winter we have been dealing with a bizarre progression of days where one is 40 to 50 degrees warmer (or colder) than the one before. It’s just hard to keep balanced.

In the midst of all the tossing about, I feel these are very pregnant days, if I might change metaphors. We’ve been busy before. We’ve had weeks with more on our plates than we know how to eat; this is not that. As Bill said to Ted (or the other way round), “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.” Something is happening. Something is growing. Something is about to be born.

That’s about the best I can do.

I am walking in the dark, but a different kind of dark — not the bottomless pit, but the unfathomable mystery.

My spiritual director, Ken, offered me this e. e. cummings poem this week during our time together:

(no time ago)

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ

jesus) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed (as

close as i’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness

One of Ginger’s favorite quotes is from Nietzsche: “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” (If he’s right, we’re about to give birth to a whole freaking galaxy!) I do love the sentiment. When life swirls around us, we can see it – or perhaps we can decide to see it – as a destructive force or as creative energy waiting to take form.

Five years ago next week was when my depression first ambushed me in a way I could name. Actually, my English Dept. Director at Winchester named it first. I lost 150 essays and she pulled me into her office and said, “We need to talk about what we are going to do about your depression.”

I am ever grateful for her courageous act of friendship.

Five years later, January feels different: energetic, chaotic, hopeful. Things are changing. The plates are shifting. The Spirit is stirring the waters.

I can’t name it much more than that. For now, I’m content to tumble along in the swirl of the mystery, keeping me eye out, of course, for any red shoes along the way.

Peace,
Milton

Years ago I wrote a children’s story called Malcolm and Noah Go Shopping, based on an old Far Side cartoon. I sent it to a couple of publishers and got one response that said my story was not publishable because the snakes did not act consistent with their species. In the story, the snakes end up making friends with a hamster. This week, BBC News ran this story about a snake in the Tokyo Zoo who befriended his “snack hamster.”

In light of this new information, I offer my story

Peace,
Milton

When we were in seminary, my housemate, Burt, and I lived on very little. We were school bus drivers when we weren’t in class, which paid about $400 a month in the late seventies. We each budgeted $10 a week for food, which meant we bought our bread at the Mrs. Baird’s Thrift Shop (day old) and counted out slices of the world’s cheapest lunch meat to make our sandwiches. Whoever got to the kitchen first got to make the lunches — and got to write a note to Miss Landers (Beaver Cleaver’s teacher) on the outside of the bag. Here’s one example I remember (Burt’s work):

Dear Miss Landers,
I’m sorry for the incident with little Milton on the playground yesterday. I hope none of the children is psychologically scared.
June Cleaver.

We cracked ourselves up.

We needed all the help we could get. We felt like outsiders in the restrictive world that was (is?) Southwestern Seminary, and our humor was one of the ways we stayed sane. Another way was looking for voices that fed us. One of those voices was John Claypool.

I found out last night he died in September. I didn’t know. His death is not news, but my grief is fresh. You can read a wonderful tribute here.

I met him a couple of times. He was a contemporary of my parents. I never really talked to him, but he felt like a friend because of his writings. The book I remember best was Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, which told the story of the death of his young daughter. In a time when most Baptist preachers were telling everyone to get right or get left, Claypool was talking about how his faith intersected his life. His resonance with my struggle to live out my faith was profound for me.

One day I told one of my professors how much Claypool fed me. He responded, “The only people John Claypool speaks to are the walking wounded and those in adolescent rebellion.”

“Is there anyone else?” I asked.

And I thought, to myself, if I could reach those people I would be doing pretty well.

One of the joys of the Communion table for me is I am sitting down to the meal with all those who have come before and all who will come after. It is an eternal moment where time is of no consequence. I’m sad John’s voice is no longer speaking in our time. I’m grateful for the legacy he left and that we still share a Meal together now and then.

Peace
Milton

Of all the wonderful things there are to eat and drink in this world, I must put Guinness at the top of my list. A well poured pint (and there is an art to the pouring) is a tasty pleasure that is difficult to match. A reasonably close second on my list is ice cream. Imagine my delight when I found this recipe here:

GUINNESS ICE CREAM
Makes 1 quart

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup Guinness stout (I guess that means you get to drink the rest!)
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons molasses
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a medium saucepan, scrape in the vanilla bean seeds. Add the pod, milk, and cream. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let the flavors infuse for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, whisk together the stout and molasses. Bring to a boil and turn off heat.

3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the yolks, sugar, and vanilla extract. Whisk in a few tablespoons of the hot cream mixture, then slowly whisk in another 1/4 cup of the cream. Add the remaining cream in a steady stream, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan.

4. Stir the beer mixture into the cream mixture. Cook the custard over medium heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon, for 6 to 8 minutes or until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon.

5. Strain the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight. Process the custard in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

I know the combination is a little hard to imagine. My guess is the ice cream has a strong molasses flavor. What I love about the recipe is someone was willing to take a risk and see how two things they loved (I love?) would go together, thus creating room for possibilities.

We gathered for our church meeting last night, almost fifty of us, unsure of what the nix would bring. Our area minister was the selected mediator for the meeting and he did an amazing job calibrating the feelings and challenging us to speak the truth in love. And there were a lot of feelings, some hopeful, some bitter, and others all along the continuum in between. We sat together for two and a half hours talking through the hurt and misunderstanding. Much of what was expressed was old stuff, which would have been less hurtful and damaging if it had been addressed in the moment. The value of the meeting, to me, was we got a pretty clear picture of who we are and how we communicate with each other.

The challenge now is in what we do with what we learned.

By the time it was over, the level of anger and hurt had lowered somewhat. One meeting will not heal stuff people have been carrying around for weeks, or even years. What did happen that was significant is the group ended up less “us and them” and a little more “us,” which, as in any church, means a rather odd mixture of flavors, not unlike the ice cream.

Being church together is not work for the faint of heart. Living out our faith in concert means there are no unilateral decisions, no room for sniper fire. We can’t think of ourselves individually without thinking of each other; we can’t think of our local church without thinking about the world around us.

One of the things we say each Sunday in our church is “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.” A couple of folks repeated that statement last night and I heard it with different ears. I have mostly thought of those words as aimed at people new to our congregation; last night I realized we need to be saying it over and over to those with whom we share the journey week after week, mile after mile.

I sat next to one person last night who has hurt mostly in silence through this ordeal. A couple of weeks ago, he talked to the senior pastor to say he and his wife felt they needed to leave the church, not out of anger but because they could not take the stand the church was taking on a particular issue. At the end of the meeting I turned to him and said, “I know these are hard days. I want you to know I miss you, I pray for you, and I love you. Whatever choices you feel you need to make, that will not change.”

His eyes filled with tears and he hugged me: “Thank you.”

No matter who we are or where we are, we all belong in the recipe for church, however odd the mix of flavors.

Peace,
Milton

One of my morning rituals is to listen to The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, which plays at the end of Morning Edition on WGBH, one of our local NPR stations. Each day, he makes note of significant birthdays in the literary world and then reads a poem. He closes each segment by saying, “Be well, do good work, and stay in touch.”

Today’s poem was one by Robert Frost:

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Tonight at church we face a different kind of time to talk. This is the night of the big meeting with the mediator. The phone and email chatter has grown quiet over the last several days; I’m not sure anyone knows quite what to expect.

Normally, I do not know of an emotion that does not make me want to eat. If I’m elated, I can think of no better way to celebrate than with a meal. If I’m depressed, I can bang my way through a bag of Cape Cod Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips without even blinking. This week has been different. Whatever I have eaten seems determined to work it’s way out of my body as though it was competing for a medal.

I am finding little comfort in food.

One of the working theories of my life is we could work most anything out if we could sit down and discuss it over a meal. If you need to ask someone to pass the potatoes, you’re going to have to figure out a way to talk about other stuff as well. Therefore, I’m a bit weary of a meeting that makes it difficult for me to even think about eating. How are we going to break down the walls that need to be broken down so we can create a time to talk — and listen?

I wish I had an answer to that question going into the meeting tonight.

How I hope we could get to the end of the time tonight and have found enough healing for someone to say, “You want to grab a bite to eat?”

Peace,
Milton

PS — As you can see from the format change, I’m trying to learn a bit more about HTML and setting up the blog the way I want it to look. Since Ginger and I live in Green Harbor, just 600 feet from Cape Cod Bay, this template seemed appropriate.