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.
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
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.
Here are some of the songs that speak to my heart in these days. I offer them to you as traveling companions.
As a part of our Ash Wednesday service, I sang Emmylou Harris’ “Prayer in Open D” (which, parenthetically, makes me think someone needs to do an Emmyloucharist, much as they did a U2charist). The song is a lament that moves my soul any time I sing or hear it.
there’s a valley of sorrow in my soul where every night I hear the thunder roll like the sound of a distant gun over all the damage I have done
and the shadows filling up this land are the ones I built with my own hand there is no comfort from the cold of this valley of sorrow in my soul
I found this clip of Sara Bereilles singing her song, “Someone Who Loves Me,” accompanied by the Milk Carton Kids.
surrender’s just a word ’til you try it out and see how hard it is to hurt with someone else around I’m the worst I’ve ever been afraid of almost everything the skies are clear but storms are always comin’ your gift to me is just to be bracing for the winds I always summon my home, my heart thank God you are someone who loves me
My friend Darren sang this song at his church for Ash Wednesday. Cindy Morgan and Phil Madeira bring a great gospel groove to “Leaning on You.
Lord, I’m prone to wander too far from the water I’ve done too many things that I can’t undo I keep meaning to be leaning on you
Josh Radin is a new name for me, but his song, “What Would You Do? (Refugee Song)” asks an enduring question.
what would you do if you saw I was torn, from the love of my mother’s hands? what would you do if the clothes I had worn, were ripped from me where I stand? what would you do?
what would you do if I washed to your shore, in need someplace to land? what would you do, would you promise me more, and say that you understand? what would you do?
would you let me come home? would you let me come home?
Gretchen Peters paints poignant pictures in “Say Grace” and invites us all to find ourselves in them.
we are gathered here together to praise his holy name in a shelter by the Greyhound station down on 5th and Main and as to who we’re praying to there run two schools of thought a benevolent provider or an unforgiving god
say grace say grace forgive yourself for all of your mistakes you might find salvation in your neighbor’s face come inside and set yourself a place and say grace
Congress passed a bill yesterday making lynching a hate crime–a hundred and fifty years late.
As the bill states, “At least 4,742 people, predominantly African Americans, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968,” and so, in the election year 2020, Congress finally said lynching was a hate crime. Emmett Till was tortured and killed about a year and a half before I was born. I am now sixty-three and yesterday Congress had the audacity to name their bill after him. Four members voted against it saying it should be a matter for the states, which sounds to me like saying we should let husbands decide what domestic violence looks like.
You can read the bill here. It is fairly self-congratulatory, pointing to the various ceremonial gestures Congress has made over the years without actually doing anything to stop the ritualized killing of African Americans. Maybe they need to read Cone’s book:
The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching. In the “lynching era,” . . . white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these “Christians” did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions.”
As Jesus was an innocent victim of mob hysteria and Roman imperial violence, many African Americans were innocent victims of white mobs, thirsting for blood in the name of God and in defense of segregation, white supremacy, and the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race. Both the cross and the lynching tree were symbols of terror, instruments of torture and execution, reserved primarily for slaves, criminals, and insurrectionists–the lowest of the low in society. Both Jesus and blacks were publicly humiliated, subjected to the utmost indignity and cruelty. They were stripped, in order to be deprived of dignity, then paraded, mocked and whipped, pierced, derided and spat upon, tortured for hours in the presence of jeering crowds for popular entertainment. In both cases, the purpose was to strike terror in the subject community.
A law that protects people from terrorism should not be a hundred years in the making. When the Towers fell on 9/11, Congress could write the Homeland Security Act fast enough. I suppose it is easier to pass legislation when you’re not the ones responsible for the terrorism. The apology in the bill should not be that we let lynching happen, but that the white government, church, and society intentionally participated to make sure African Americans got the message.
The bitter irony that a president who has a long record of racist words and actions will be the one to sign the bill into law ought to call into question how seriously it will be prosecuted. Perhaps it should have an asterisk at the end: *for ceremonial use only.
The phrase, “They’ve got a lot of damn gall,” comes to mind.
The water is still toxic in Flint, Michigan. Our prisons are disproportionately filled with black men. We do not hold our police accountable when they shoot and kill an African American. Our education and health systems are designed to be inequitable. But, hey–Congress passed a bill making lynching a hate crime.
I’ve been thinking all day of how to meet you here, as my Lenten Journal begins for another year. Tonight I was looking through some notes and found this quote from James Baldwin in an article in Brainpickings.
Once people know what they know, they make the unconscious assumption that they were born knowing what they know, and forget that they had to learn everything they know.
His words reminded me of my favorite passage from T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. Merlin is speaking to Arthur:
The best thing for being sad . . . is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
The oldest roots of the word learn mean “to follow the track.” Learning, at its heart, is less about amassing information or proving a point and more about seeing where things will take you. If we only go looking for things that will support what we think we have nailed down, we won’t learn a thing.
Lent, like any of the seasons of the liturgical year, I suppose, can be a journey around a familiar track. We all know we are on the road to the Cross. We all know there’s an empty tomb at the end of the story. The path is so familiar we don’t even have to say, “Spoiler alert.” We know Judas sells Jesus out. We know Peter denies him. We know the disciples lock themselves in the Upper Room out of fear. We know that up from the grave he arose.
But what if we don’t know?
What if there is more to learn? What would it take to listen as though we weren’t the ones who knew what it was all about?
Last week, I was in Memphis with a group from our church on a Civil Rights History Tour, which is an annual event Ginger leads to a different city to help us understand our place in changing the narrative of racism that is at the heart of so much of American history. We saw the story lived out in Memphis in both the churches and the blues–and we got a good taste of both.
This morning I began the first of my books for Lent, The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone. He talks about the role of both the blues and the church in the struggle for civil rights.
The blues prepared people to fight for justice by giving them a cultural identity that made them human and thus ready to struggle. The blues sent people traveling, roaming, looking for a woman or a man to soothe one’s aching heart. But it was Jesus’ cross that sent people protesting in the streets, seeking to change the social structures of racial oppression.
Cone said a couple of other things in the chapter I read that made me want to learn this Lent.
The more black people struggled against white supremacy, the more they found in the cross the spiritual power to resist the violence they so often suffered. . . . Just as Jesus did not deserve to suffer, they knew they did not deserve it; yet faith was the one thing that white people could not control or take away. . . .
Because of their experience of arbitrary violence, the cross was and is a redeeming and comforting image for many black Christians. If the God of Jesus’ cross is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history. . . . The final word about black life is not death on a lynching tree but redemption in the cross–a miraculously transformed life found in the God of the gallows. . . . The cross places God in the middle of crucified people.”
I listened to someone talk recently about what the Church had to say to America about racism. They seemed to assume that those not in church were waiting on a word, or expecting us to lead. I began to think about when the Church has offered a prophetic voice and, as I thought about the Civil Rights Movement or liberation theology, it seemed to me that the prophetic voices come mostly from the margins, not from the halls of power and the rooms filled with The People Who Know. Those who speak truth to power are the prophets, and they are the ones still on the receiving end of most of the suffering.
They are walking the track I want to follow this Lenten season. I have a lot to learn.
Last summer, Ginger and I got to go to Dyersville, Iowa and visit the farm where Field of Dreams was filmed. The baseball diamond is still there, between the house and the cornfield. We were two of only a handful of people walking around, so we played catch, me on the pitcher’s mound and she at home plate, for about fifteen magical minutes. We didn’t take pictures of it, we just threw the ball back and forth, laughing and talking and imaging ourselves among the players that found redemption on that field thanks to Ray Kinsella.
As we played, and then as we drove away, I thought about Terrence Mann’s words as he encouraged Ray not to sell the farm and destroy the diamond:
People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh, people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.
These days, it seems, we are in the process of erasing America in ways that feel unprecedented to me. Actually, erase is not a strong enough word, because replacing words on a blackboard is a reasonably easy proposition. The emotional and spiritual damage of our time feels more like the erasure of American helicopters spewing napalm across the Vietnamese landscape or firebombing Dresden–an erasure that leaves little more than ashes and grief–and we haven’t even begun to talk about the incessant repetition of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the relentless ranting on social media that is as claustrophobic as it is caustic and cynical.
This week started off well. Monday was my mother-in-law Rachel’s birthday. Monday was also Truck Day, which is the day the trucks leave Fenway Park to haul all the gear the Red Sox will need for Spring Training. Monday was also the day that it became apparent that Mitch McConnell had made sure the Senate would not call witnesses in the impeachment trial and the Republicans would vote in lock step. Tuesday was the State of the Union address, which I intentionally avoided, though I could not avoid the chatter that followed. Wednesday the Senate voted to acquit Trump, which means he will be even more sure he can do anything he wants. As I read the news (I have long since quit watching or listening) and made the mistake of reading a few Facebook threads, I struggled to name my feelings. I was grateful for manuscripts to edit that pulled my focus to better things. But even with them, by late afternoon, my mind was tired, my heart was heavy, and I needed to walk. I met Ginger and we wandered through neighborhoods for about an hour and talked, which has always been a good way to find myself.
I told her I wasn’t depressed. As long as we both have lived with my depression, we know that when it dominates my life, I am incapacitated. I said I felt despondent, even despairing, but not hopeless. I was angry, and I knew if I didn’t figure out where to aim it, it was going come out sideways. I told her I wished I could stand on the Green and scream swear words at the top of my lungs, but I knew that would frighten dogs and children and probably wouldn’t do much for her as the pastor of the Church on the Green; it probably wouldn’t do much for me either. I had considered getting off of Facebook, because what Facebook aims at me is part of the problem, but that would mean losing a lot of important connections. As we walked and talked, I came to some decisions: I would cancel my news subscriptions, delete those apps from my phone, and only go on Facebook to post poetry or blog posts and to check in with specific people.
Rachel had a friend visiting for her birthday, so we all went to dinner and then, when we got home, I built a fire. We were sitting in the living room having a lovely conversation, when I noticed Rachel was scrolling through her phone. (Remember the part where I said things come out sideways?)
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Then put your phone down and talk to your friend.”
In my mind, I was playing with her. Ginger told me later that it didn’t come across that way. Just typing the first few sentences of our encounter (oh, yes–I didn’t let up; there was more) makes it apparent to me–again–that my tone was less than jovial. Ginger stopped me before I did too much damage and I left the room, not yet understanding what was going on inside myself, but realizing I needed a time out, as it were. I ended up at my computer, writing my post about stepping away from Facebook.
“Tonight,” I wrote, “I feel like something broke inside me.” Then I went to bed.
This morning I had a clearer picture of the damage I had done, first, because Ginger had written a compassionately confrontative text before she went to bed and, second, because my insight had had time to catch up to my emotions. I couldn’t yell on the Green, so I exploded in the living room. Since everyone was still asleep, I wrote texts to Rachel and Ginger to apologize before I left the house for work. As I walked across the Green in the morning mist, I realized what had pushed me over the edge: the other thing that happened Wednesday was the Red Sox traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers.
Mookie Freakin’ Betts. The best player in a Red Sox uniform that I have seen in person. The one I hoped would stay in Boston his whole career and break all the records. The one whose name is on the back of my Red Sox t-shirt. How could baseball remind me of all that once was good and that could be good again if they traded Mookie Betts? I was throwing bean balls at Rachel because the Sox traded Mookie.
The root of the word apology is apologos–story, account. To apologize is to retell the story of the damage we have done and then, perhaps, to rewrite the ending. I wanted to tell a different story about how I express my anger than I took it out on Rachel and her phone.
The word apology is used theologically, in its oldest form, to mean a justification or a defense, which leans into an overarching judicial metaphor for life, which is not a helpful one, for the most part. Justification also means setting things right. When lines on a page are justified, in printer lingo, they are ordered in relation to one another. The prophet Micah said we are called to love justice, do kindness, and walk humbly with God. To apologize, then, is to set myself right with those around me in kindness and humility to keep the story going instead of digging in and going nowhere.
I’m glad I wrote that last sentence down. I’m sure I will need to come back to it.
Mookie is gone. I sincerely wonder if our country will survive the erasure that is currently underway and, I think, far from over. And, when I opened Facebook this morning to post my poem for the day, I was greeted by a hundred comments on my words from last night. I opened my phone to find texts from friends near and far. As I was sitting down with my coffee, I got a call from someone seven states away and twenty years ago who wanted me to know I was not alone. Then I talked with my friend Peter, whom I meet every Thursday for coffee and friendship.
All is not lost. A lot is lost, but not all. I am not alone. And I am called to apologize–which is to say to set myself right with those around me in kindness and humility. For me, that means creating space enough for me to not be so crowded by the cynicism. Room–like a baseball diamond–where a game of catch is a treasure and the point is for everyone to get home.
Peace,
Milton
PS–Since I used the title, I have to let you hear the song: all in all is all we are . . .
My family moved to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia in 1957.
Back then, that required sailing on a passenger freighter from New York to Beira, Mozambique, which took thirty-two days. I turned one in the course of the journey from Texas to Africa. None of us had much idea of what we were in for.
Though Southern Rhodesia was a British colony, which meant English was declared the national language, my parents wanted to learn isiNdabele, the indigenous language of the area. But navigating English also required new understanding. My father told the story of calling a plumber and asking for help because our commode was stopped up.
The plumber said, “We don’t work on commodes,” and hung up.
He and my father played that scene over two or three times until finally my dad called and said, “Don’t hang up. I know that what is broken in my house is something you work on; I just don’t know what to call it. What do you think a commode is?”
“A bedside table; what do you think it is?”
“it’s the thing in the bathroom that you sit on.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It won’t swallow,” said the Texan.
“I’ll be right there,” the plumber said and he hung up.
After he got everything working, the plumber told my dad that the job was one he normally would have assigned to one of his people, but he had to be able to go home and tell his wife he had seen a commode that wouldn’t swallow.
I thought of that story this morning in church as we sang “Jesus, You Have Come to the Lakeshore,” a hymn originally written in Spanish but translated into English. I am willing to admit my judgmental tone when I say the translator did not have much of sense of poetry in their work. Here is the first stanza and chorus:
You have come down to the lakeshore Seeking neither the wise nor the wealthy, But only asking for me to follow.
Sweet Lord, you have looked into my eyes, Kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name. On the sand I’ve abandoned my small boat; Now with you, I will seek other seas.
I half expected the second verse to have something to do with asking which way the library was. I found the Spanish lyric and put it into Google Translate and it didn’t come out too differently:
You have come to the shore, you have not sought either wise or rich, you just want me to follow you.
Lord, you’ve looked me in the eye, smiling you’ve said my name. In the sand I left my boat, next to you I will look for another sea.
I didn’t leave church looking to trash the translator of the hymn, but in my afternoon of poetry reading, I went back to a poem by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski that I need to hear this week.
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
I also found the Polish text and I can tell you the translator got to know the words before she sent them off in a new language.
Learning to talk and listen to each other is hard work. My father could have saved himself a couple of hangups (and lost a good story, I suppose) had he been willing to say “toilet” when commode didn’t communicate, and, knowing my dad, saying it wouldn’t “swallow” was playing for full effect. Perhaps the plumber, who came from somewhere in England, could have said that a commode was beside the bed originally because it held the chamber pot that eventually evolved into the toilet when indoor plumbing was invented. It helps to know where our words come from.
The sentiment behind singing hymns from different cultures in our historically white congregation is a good thing, and poetry asks the best of us in any language. Heart and art rhyme in English, but not so much corazón and arte. Our metaphors are only as good as our understanding.
Our friend Jeanette wrote her dissertation on the role of the interpreters in the La Amistad trial. They had to find people, right here in New Haven, who knew English and Spanish and the African languages in order for the trial to be fair. As I write, I realize that Jeanette, who is Puerto Rican and at least bilingual, never calls them translators; they are interpreters. In some of my recent reading, though I can’t find it now, someone said translation is colonization, which is to say once I can say, “This is what you mean” I take over your words. If I interpret, then you still have a voice in the process.
I have no idea if the semantics of all of that holds up, other than it seems that if we are to find “the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns,” perhaps, we need to be about the task of interpreting instead of translating; asking, “Is this what you mean?” rather than deciding we are close enough for our purposes. And, sometimes, we need our words interpreted back to us so that we can see the impact, intentional or not, of what we thought we said and how it went out into the world.
We sang a bunch of fishing hymns in church because the lectionary passage was from Matthew 18 where Jesus saw Peter and James and John and said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” Whatever they thought he meant, it was enough to make them drop their nets in the middle of a fishing day and go with him.
I am still in need of more interpretation, even as I try to follow, too.
