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lenten journal: sing to me

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: sing to me

I went to New York for work today and the train ride hope turned into a litany of loved ones who are hurting tonight for a number of reasons. As I sat down to write, I found myself turning to the words–and music–of others.

Red Molly is a trio who harmonize like they are related. Their song “Sing to Me” (I couldn’t find out if they wrote it) describes the comfort I find in music.

when the day is long
and my will is gone
and my heart’s heavy
I don’t need wine or gin
I don’t need medicine
darling, sing to me

try to be so good
like I knew I should
I done all I could to feel free
when the hurt is spread
and I ain’t got a standing leg
darling, sing to me

Randy Newman wrote “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” which is about as good a sad song as I know. He does a great rendition of it as well, but when YouTube offers Nina Simone, well, you take it.

broken windows and empty hallways,
a pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
human kindness is overflowing,
and I think it’s gonna rain today.

scarecrows dressed in the latest styles,
the frozen smiles to chase love away.
human kindness is overflowing,
and I think it’s gonna rain today.

The first version I heard of Cliff Eberhardt singing his song “The Long Road” was a duet with Richie Havens. I found the song in my thirties and the second verse has hung in my heart ever since. Just a few years ago, he came back to re-record the song after some sever personal difficulties. Here is his well-aged solo version.

there are the ones you call friends
there are the ones you call late at night
there are the ones who sweep away your past
with one wave of the hand

there are the ones you call family
there are the ones you hold close to your heart
there are the ones who see danger in you
and won’t understand

I can hear your voice in the wind
are you calling to me? Down the long road
do you really think that there’s an end
I have followed my dreams, down the long road

Guy Clark’s “Old Friends” is another touchstone for me because it is old friends, after all.

it’s like when you’re making conversation
and you’re trying not to scream
and you’re trying not to tell ’em
you don’t care what they mean
and you’re really feeling fragile
and you really can’t get home
and you really feel abandoned
but you want to be alone

old Friends they shine like diamonds
old Friends you can always call
old Friends Lord you can’t buy ’em
you know it’s old Friends after all

John Moreland’s “Gospel” is a declaration of defiance and hope that I offer for those who are hurting tonight.

I wanna be solid as the earth and cool like the night air
I wanna believe even though I know life don’t play fair
I wanna wear my heart on my sleeve but be tough when I have to
I wanna dust off the stars and hang them on the wall for you

I wanna ask all the questions with answers we’ll never know
I wanna find my faith in records from long ago
I wanna set fear on fire and give dreaming a fair shot
and never give up whether anybody cares or not

Our benediction is “May I Suggest,” a song I keep coming back to because it reminds me that whatever these days are, these are the days that matter–and Susan Warner finds every last rhyme for suggest.

Susan Werner

there is a hope that’s been expressed in you
the hope of seven generations, maybe more
and this is the faith that they invest in you
it’s that you’ll do one better than was done before
inside you know
inside you understand
inside you know what’s yours to finally set right
and I suggest
and I suggest to you
and I suggest this is the best part of your life

Sing along, old friends.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: for the boys

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4
lenten journal: for the boys

Saturday night I cooked dinner for a group of women in our church who have gotten together monthly for many years to share a meal and talk about their lives and their faith. They invited me to come do a sort of cooking lesson and then stay for the discussion. We sat at the table long after we finished eating.

It was a sacred meal.

I was reading Embracing Hopelessness before church this morning; the chapter was “There is no God, only Auschwitz.” Miguel De La Torre has a “conversation partner” for each of his chapters to challenge him as he writes. For this section, it is Santiago Slabodsky, who teaches Jewish Studies and Religion at Hofstra University. For him,

the killing that occurred in Auschwitz would not have been possible if not for the consequences of the colonial ventures in the Americas and throughout Africa. What was implemented in Europe against the Jews finds its roots in modernity’s colonization process. [Slobodsky links] the suffering of genocide victims under a triumphant Christianity that has claimed for itself a new chosenness. To be chosen justifies the decimation of those not chosen.

It also justifies the subjugation and oppression of those not chosen.

Earlier in the chapter, De La Torre quotes Abel Herberg:

There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.

His point is that big numbers dehumanize reality. Five thousand African American women, children, and men were lynched, yet it was the death of Emmett Till that changed things. The terrorists who inflict the carnage do their best to keep things impersonal. Anonymity does not breed compassion.

Things change when it gets personal, which I am beginning to understand is at the heart of lo cotidiano, the everyday, that I wrote about a couple of nights ago. To be a part of helping to change your everyday–and mine–I have to know what your everyday life is like. I have to know you. Real justice is personal because to get personal means to give up power.

As we mark International Women’s Day, I am grateful for the world wide emphasis, but it looses some of its punch just days after Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the race. Just look at Bernie and Joe and you can see there is more going on than America really loves old White guys better than anyone else.

My favorite elevator speech about the UCC, my denomination, is that we ordained the first African American man to pastor a White congregation before the Civil War, we began ordaining women sixty years before they could vote, and we ordained the first openly gay minister in 1970–when the American Psychiatric Association still listed homosexuality as a mental illness.

Hooray for us, and our church here in Guilford was founded in 1643. It has been a part of the denomination for all of the changes I just mentioned. And, until Ginger and her co-pastor Sarah came to the church a little over four years ago, the church had never called a woman to be the senior pastor. The same is true of a lot of “big steeple” churches. On the issue of equality we will speak up, but when it gets personal . . .

It has to get personal to make a difference.

It was Music Sunday at church today. One of the songs our children’s choir sang–with stringed accompaniment and some help from the Adult Choir–was an Emily Dickinson poem that had been put to music:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Even Emily, it seems, knew about lo cotidiano.

I grew up in a denomination that taught that women were subservient to men. They even had a name for it: complementarianism. I say had; they’re still teaching that crap. On this International Women’s Day, Slobodsky’s observation the chosen decimating the not chosen made me think of horribly the history of Christianity (and Islam and Judaism) is marred by the self-proclaimed chosenness of men. I know sexism didn’t start with Nicaea, but the Church of the Empire doubled down on it pretty quickly.

Men, we are not the chosen ones. We do not have rights above anyone else. We do not deserve to be treated better, or paid more; our penises are not signs of privilege.

White men, responsibility for much of the world’s inequity lies at our feet, particularly since we began identifying ourselves as White men so we could colonize and abuse everyone else.

Straight, White, cisgendered men, our sense of entitlement, along with our fear that masquerades as arrogance, has made life miserable for pretty much everyone else.

If you don’t believe me, just ask around.

We can’t fix colonialism, or even post-colonialism. We can’t eradicate sexism or racism or any other ism or phobia. As I said, that’ s not how change happens. Emily Dickinson is on to how change really happens–one broken heart at a time. And then another. And another.

Listen everyday.
Pay attention everyday.
Ask good questions everyday.
Ask for feedback everyday.
Learn about those around you everyday.
Change what you can everyday.
Remember you are not that important everyday.
Put your love into action everyday.

Everyday, Boys. Every. Damn. Day.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: reflection

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: reflection

I am going to lean into an old poem tonight because I have spent most of the evening cooking and eating with a small group from church. We filled ourselves up with pimento cheese-stuffed pork loin and black-eyed pea risotto, as well as with laughter, good questions, and good stories. This poem feels like a good way to wrap up the night.

reflection

there are days I lay awake
at night and wonder even
worry about what’s to come
because the future feels

like a past due account and
I have already spent my time
thinking about tomorrow
putting the tense in present

there are nights like this
when I fall asleep holding
on to the day like the last
bite of the meal we shared

where we passed our plates
like forgiveness and let
ourselves love and laugh
like the present were a gift

and we press our fingers
to get every last crumb
and thank God we were
made to be hungry

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: gardens and guts

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: gardens and guts

One of the things I brought back from our trip to Memphis was my allergic reaction to whatever pollen was floating in the air. I have lived with allergies all of my life, which means I have taken some sort of antihistamine–or multiples of them–for most of my life as well. I have not had luck with shots, so I keep the pharma companies in business.

Thanks to the recommendation of my friend Peter, I went to see a naturopath who used a different approach and a different vocabulary to talk about both my allergies and my treatment, which has given me new hope. The problem, she said, had to do with my gut, not my sinuses. She went on to tell me about the gut microbiome–the community of bacteria that live in our digestive systems–that control the histamines in our bodies, among other things. When we have allergic reactions, it is our bodies overloading on the histamines. Because the bacteria in my gut aren’t healthy, I am overrun with histamines and have been for a very long time.

“The amazing thing is,” she said, “the gut microbiome is not made up of human cells. They are inhabitants in your body.”

I smiled and said, “You mean I am my own solar system?”

Our human bodies are made up of about thirty trillion cells; we have about forty trillion bacterial cells inside us. Most of the cells that live in us are immigrants, we might say. To be healthy requires that we live in community with all that inhabits us.

This afternoon, I met with my gardening buddy Tom. He and I have worked the church garden behind our house together for the last two summers. He actually knows what he’s doing. Through the years now that we have dug in the dirt together we have talked a lot about the theological implications of our sowing and reaping and composting. From the first summer, we talked about wanting more of the church people to participate.

“It will take three years before people start coming,” I said. “We just have to be faithful to the task.”

Last Sunday, during our time to express prayers of joy, Tom gave thanks for the garden and invited people to help. He showed up today with a list of names. We talked about how to build a network among interested folks to make sure the garden as well tended. We also talked about the Poetry Rock, a big piece of granite that we couldn’t move so we turned it into a stage from which we can read poetry and sing hymns to the plants–an idea I got from my friend Tim, in Durham, who reads Walt Whitman to his corn every summer.

When Tom and I are together, we spend at least some time talking about our fascination with the mycorrhizal networks that connect the plants and trees and allow them to communicate and share food. No plant grows alone. Millions of bacteria and fungi swap nutrients with trees and the soil across miles and miles of forests and farms and gardens. We might say it is–wait for it–the Wood Wide Web.

(Thank you very much. I’ll be here all Lent.)

We talked about how to foster the community of those who want to garden together, as well as those we can feed with what we grow, and even the plants themselves. Then we talked about how we can use the garden to speak to the wider church about what it means to be growing here in Guilford together.

It is not lost on me that I have been reminded this week about all the ways we are connected by Peter, Tim, and Tom. The list is longer, but they are the three attached to these stories. We need each other to stay alive. To stay healthy. We are connected to people, to the soil, to the trees, and to the bacteria that live in us and beneath them in ways we cannot comprehend and we cannot ignore, if we are to all stay healthy. Our connectedness is not optional. It is as intricate as micro-cellular make up and as large as the universe. Like Joni Mitchell sang, we are stardust, we are golden.

And it helps to get ourselves back to the garden.

Peace,
Milton

I wouldn’t quote Joni and then not let her sing.

lenten journal: lo cotidiano

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
lenten journal: lo cotidiano

My head and heart are full tonight, so this post is as well.

As the news of Elizabeth Warren ending her presidential bid found me and I realized, as many did, that the election has devolved into Grumpy Old Men 3: Patriarchy and Privilege, I went back to James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which I finished last night.

Cone’s penultimate chapter focused on the essential place of Black women to understand the connection between the cross and the lynching tree.

When we look at a lynched black victim transfigured as the recrucified Black Christ, we might as well be looking at “a colored woman . . . stripped naked and hung in the county courthouse yard and her body riddled with bullets and left exposed to view!” That was the point made by womanist theologian Jacquelyn Grant when she used the experience of poor black women as the lens for interpreting the meaning of Jesus Christ today. “The significance of Christ is not found in his maleness, but his humanity,” writes Grant. “This Chris, found in the experiences of black women,” “the oppressed of the oppressed,” “is a black woman.” Unfortunately, the powerful image of “Christ as a Black Woman” has been left out of our spiritual and intellectual imagination, needing further theological development.

If womanist is not a familiar term to you, here is Alice Walker’s definition:

WOMANIST
1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e. frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “you acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans. “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

This morning I started a new book, Embracing Hopelessness by Miguel A. De La Torre. In Chapter One , De La Torre mentioned a term in Latinx theology I did not know: lo cotidiano, “the everyday along with all its particularities.”

Humans are an end, not a means. If . . . humans are the supreme subject of history, then I would argue that any construction of the God of History must orient history toward establishing justice by taking sides with the faceless under oppression–the multiple anonymous I’s of history.

I wanted to learn more, so I typed lo cotidiano theology into Google and learned about Mujerista theology and the writings of Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, which is the Latinx sibling of Womanist theology. Isasi-Diaz said Mujeristas were those

· Who desire a society and a world where there is no oppression.
· Who struggle for a society in which differences and diversity are valued.
· Who know that our world has limits and that we have to live simply so others can simply live.
· Who understand that material richness is not a limitless right but it carries a “social mortgage” that we have to pay to the poor of the world.
· Who savor the struggle for justice, which, after all, is one of the main reasons for living.
· Who try no matter what to know, maintain, and promote our Latina culture.
· Who know that a “glorified” self-abnegation is many times the source of our oppression.
· Who know women are made in the image of God and, as such, value ourselves.
· Who know we are called to birth new women and men, a strong Latino people.
· Who recognize that we have to be source of hope and of a reconciling love.
· Who love ourselves so we can love God and our neighbor.
MUJERISTAS are those of us who struggle for justice for our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, godmothers, comadres, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, goddaughter, friends, women-partners, and for ourselves.

She wrote,

The main reasons structural changes have not come about or lasted, I wish to suggest, derives from the fact that structural change has not been seen as integrally related to lo cotidiano. To correct this, I insist, it is time we listen to Latinas and other grassroots women around the world and, drawing from their wisdom, that we conceptualize structural change in a different way than has been understood in the past. This does not mean ceasing to work on changing family structures, work- related structures, the economic structures of our societies, political structures, church structures. However, following the insights of grass-roots women, structural change must be rooted in lo cotidiano. Unless the changes we struggle to bring about impact the organization and function of lo cotidiano, structural change will not happen, and, if it happens, it will not last. We want to be clear that it is not a matter of either/or. We certainly must continue to organize, to bring about changes in the way politicians are chosen, how multinational corporations operate, how the churches control what is considered orthodox. Those changes, however cannot be conceived or brought apart from the question, ”What change will this bring to the everyday lives of poor and oppressed women?” Maybe it is time to give up grandiose plans for sweeping changes and to realize that even if those changes were accomplished they will not last unless they bring about change at the level of lo cotidiano.

Tonight, I hear Micah 6:8 in a new way:

What does the Lord require of you?
Do justice
Love kindness
Walk humbly with God

Micah is not talking in abstract terms; he’s describing how to make changes in everyday lives. Structural change must be rooted in lo cotidiano, which means my everyday life needs to be up for change as well, if I am going to help build the beloved community.

I told you my head and heart were full.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: unraveling

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
lenten journal: unraveling

First, I want you to watch this short film–which I learned about from my friend, Hugh Hollowell, who has a wonderful newsletter–you can subscribe here–then we’ll talk.

I feel presumptuous even saying anything after such a wonderful picture of love, but I am going to anyway.

If you have followed this blog for any time at all, or if you have been around me much, you have heard me mention Patty Griffin’s song “When It Don’t Come Easy.” When I first began to come to terms with my depression in 2001, the song gave me something to hold on to.

red lights are flashing on the highway
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home tonight
everywhere the waters getting rough
your best intentions may not be enough
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home tonight

but if you break down
I’ll drive out and find you
if you forget my love
I’ll try to remind you
and stay by you when it don’t come easy

The chorus described what life felt like everyday: I broke down and Ginger drove out to find me. And she always found me.

I thought about her and those days watching the movie about the dinosaur who was willing to become unraveled to show its love for the fox who needed to be found. Just as powerful, for me, was watching the fox collect the yarn and the stuffing and begin to put the dinosaur back together again. The unraveling was not the last word.

Unraveling is not a bad metaphor for these days; so is feeling like you are drowning and can’t get out of the pool. When we do what it takes to drive out and find each other, we find out–over and over–that love is the last word.

I will let Patty send us out.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: words that say together

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: words that say together

As I, like many have mourned the death of James Lipton, who hosted Inside the Actors’ Studio, I learned he wrote a book, An Exaltation of Larks, which is a “lovingly curated ode to the unique collective nouns that adorn our language.” As a way to honor him, and because I, too, love collective nouns–words that describe what it means to be together–here is a list–not all of which are official:

a bloat of hippos (you knew I’d start there)
a crash of rhinos
a leap of leopards
a tuxedo of penguins
a shrewdness of apes
a sleuth of bears
a scurry of chipmunks
a tenacity of schnauzers
a committee of vultures
a knot of toads
an ambush of tigers
a prickle of porcupines
a cupboard of pandas
a romp of otters
a mischief of mice
a horde of hamsters
an aurora of polar bears
a bellowing of bullfinches
a blessing of unicorns
a bob of seals
a yap of chihuahuas
a slide of slugs
a stench of skunks
a pint of mussels
a passel of possums
a delay of sloths
a fan of peacocks
a leash of greyhounds
a scourge of mosquitos
an annoyance of gnats
a hover of trout
a flamboyance of flamingos
a percussion of woodpeckers
a wiggle of worms
a charm of hummingbirds
a business of ferrets
a laugh of hyenas
a tusk of walruses
a bark of dogfish
a shock of eels
a congregation of alligators

Then I thought of a few I would like to see:

an embarrassment of politicians
an assignment of teachers
a chord of musicians
a fret of guitarists
a litany of ministers
a recipe of chefs
an stress of parents
a jubilation of children

Feel free to add your own.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: picture this

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7
lenten journal: picture this

Some nights I sit down to write with a heart full of stuff to say; other nights–like this one–I rummage around through my notes and scroll through pages looking for inspiration. Such is the nature of a practice, I suppose: sometimes it is easier than others.

Today is the sixty-fourth anniversary of my parents’ wedding. I learned tonight, as I wandered about, that March 2, 1956 was a Friday. I did not know they got married on a Friday. I would love to have known that story. The cover picture for this post is one of my favorite pictures of my folks. I would love to know the story behind it as well.

Part of the story I do know is by the time they celebrated their second wedding anniversary, we were living in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia. By their sixth, we were living in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia. And on October 24, 1964–between their eighth anniversary and my eighth birthday, Northern Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zambia.

Kenneth Kaunda was the first president of Zambia and, before that, the civil rights leader who was at the forefront of the struggle to break free of British colonial rule. He is now in his nineties and the last living member of that group of incredible African leaders who dedicated their lives to the freedom of their people. My parents got to know KK, as people called him, and his wife Betty. When they moved into State House, the presidential residence, my folks helped them carry the boxes. That first Christmas, my Cub Scout troop caroled at State House and President Kaunda answered the door and invited us in for tea. While we were sitting in the living room, he said, “You have sung of the birth of the Christ child. Now, I will sing for you of my faith,” and he sat down at the piano and played and sang Psalm 23.

Tonight, as I scrolled, I found this picture on the Facebook page of a Zambian friend: Kenneth Kaunda with Martin Luther King, Jr. when KK visited Atlanta in 1960. When I went looking for the context of the picture, I learned that because of that visit, Kaunda went back to Zambia and began nonviolent actions of civil disobedience that helped the struggle for independence become a reality. For me, just two weeks away from walking in Memphis and standing at the window of the Lorraine Motel, where King was killed before he had a chance to turn 40, the picture brought up deep admiration and appreciation for both men and gratitude that my life got to intersect with one of them.

I don’t have a big finish, other than to say I am grateful for the audacity of parents who dragged me off to Africa when I was a baby, for the first president I remember to be such a person of character and faith, and for the legacy of Dr. King and those still fresh on my heart from Tennessee who, even from the grave, are calling me to a deeper understanding of both my faith and my humanity.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: minor gifts

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
lenten journal: minor gifts

minor gifts

when it comes
to campaigns
major donors
give big bucks

minor givers
give lesser gifts
and are, thus, less
on lots of levels

but minor in
music means
melancholy
a flatted third

makes a home
for sadness
and songs in the
key of grief

one note
changes a chord
one moment
changes a day

even a lifetime
the melody of
sorrow begs for
a harmony line

we have more
to offer than
our abundance
sing along

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: threat landscape

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1
lenten journal: threat landscape

threat landscape

who knows what’s
out there hiding
in the hills
or in a handshake

I could get hit
by a bus or a brick
or the morning news

hard enough to knock
me flat on my back

what happens next
is just waiting
until I drop my
guard or my keys

I don’t know what’s
around the corner
(around the corona)

what could go off
or go wrong
I can’t hear anything
but warnings

but I’m not saying
anything new
only repeating what
I’ve heard repeated

be afraid be afraid
be afraid be afraid

how many times
do we need to say it

be afraid be afraid
be afraid be afraid

no–don’t be afraid
don’t be afraid

our fear is getting
us nowhere
don’t catch the virus

be aware
be awake
be alive

draw new maps
tell new stories
and old ones

who knows what’s
could be out there

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