don't eat alone

The string of cancellations that crowded my afternoon undid several of my spring rituals–March Madness and Opening Day for the Red Sox, to name the two most significant. It looks like it will be a while before I get to use #itsnextyear as I post about whatever the Sox do that gives me indefatigable hope. It will be next year before I get to stay up late cheering for some twelfth seed I’ve never heard of to knock of number five.

The NCAA has an insurance policy that they will cash in on for the first time that will pay them close to what they would have made had all of the games been played. But it doesn’t pay the folks in restaurants and hotels who won’t be working, or the concession workers at the venues. The ripples that go out from the arenas and theaters and even churches who are shuttering their doors to try and “flatten the curve” (today’s catch phrase) and devastating waves for some. The painful reality is that our economic way of life treats hourly (and mostly benefit-less) workers as a resource rather than as human beings.

The act of cancelling school, in many cities, means the majority of students won’t get breakfast and lunch on a daily basis. Since health insurance is tied to employers, and the insurance companies are in the business of making as much profit as they can, means that the stock market drop and the sport cancellations are not the biggest tragedies, even though they are the ones getting air time.

The people who clean hotels and buildings are at great risk. Musicians and others who make their living doing live performances have no rooms to play in and no one to play to. I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be a sanitation worker, or anyone who works in a hospital or a clinic.

I don’t want to merely state the obvious, nor am I trying to preach. I am just mindful tonight that not being able to find hand sanitizer and noticing that my hands are dry and red from washing them so much is the level of my discomfort. Many around me have much more at stake.

As I looked to others for words of inspiration, I found this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye:

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Read these lines again:

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

Let us not let the fact that we can’t touch each other cancel our commitment to care for one another. One way or another, we have to carry each other, carry each other . . .

Peace,
Milton

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

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

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.

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

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

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