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advent journal: solstice sandwich

solstice sandwich

today was the thinnest
of daylight sandwiches
the shortest distance
between two darknesses

last night it began to snow
but it was another thinness
icing across the landscape
an inconsequential covering

tonight is the thickest
of nighttime sandwiches
the widest distance
between two daylights

tomorrow the sun will rise
and it will be another thinness
lighting up the landscape
an inconsequential covering

in this time of not enough
we do well to remember
that days never stand alone
and neither do the nights

snow falls in seasons and
days are numbered by years
it takes more than one
sandwich to make a lifetime

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: chowder head

chowder head

I think coincidence
and soup are synonyms
both words mean
to fall together

it started with bacon
that’s when I knew
we were having
chowder for supper

I found potatoes
and chopped clams
even as I grabbed
items as though

I was gathering
props for improv
giving myself options
I couldn’t see yet

the clam to spud
ratio was unbalanced
so I reached for
the sweet potatoes

and let the creamy
coincidence simmer
as the soup turned
the color of sunset

we emptied our bowls
and filled them again
grateful for the way
things fall together

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: live and learn

live and learn

“the only way to learn is to live”

the words came from
a fictional librarian
who lives in a story
about consequences
an old word that means
what comes next after
whatever we said
or did or didn’t do
which we can’t see
until we live through it
and that makes me
want to flip the thing

the only way to live is to learn

to learn means to be
cultivated and to live
is to continue or remain
the way to continue
is to be cultivated
to fill the furrows of
our brows with what
has come next as we
plow our way through
one thing after another
so our days add up to a
story worth telling

living and learning
are chicken and egg
whether we’re talking
sequence or consequence
we must continue
to be cultivated and
remain attentive to
whatever is coming
remember the end of
the world is long overdue

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: repeat the sounding joy

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is watching—no, rewatching—movies. We have several that we need to see at some point during the holidays to make the season feel complete: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” of course; “Christmas in Connecticut” with Barbara Stanwyck; “The Preacher’s Wife” with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston; Bill Murray’s take on “A Christmas Carol,” which is called “Scrooged;” Will Ferrell in “Elf;” and “The Family Stone,” which has a cast full of great actors in a story that is both heartfelt and hilarious about what it means to be family.

After a chaotic scene where a number of the story lines come tumbling in on each other in the big kitchen of the family home, one of the sons—Ben (played by Luke Wilson)—leans back on his pillow with his arms behind his head and in a voice that carries a tone of wonder and amazement says, “Repeat the sounding joy.”

He says it with such beautiful force that always gives me pause—and he says it before the big mess that has the family pulling in different directions has been sorted out.

I, like pretty much all of us, have sung that line every Christmas of my life in “Joy to the World,” but I had never really thought about what it meant until I saw “The Family Stone” and heard Ben speak the words: repeat the sounding joy.

Part of what Isaac Watts was communicating in his hymn was that to be joyful was to join the chorus of creation that is already making a joyful noise.

joy to the earth, the savior reigns
let all their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains,
repeat the sounding joy

We are not singing a new song; we are repeating the rhythm of all that is swirling around us. We are repeating what we hear—if we are listening, which is what it takes to make good music: first we listen, then we sing.

Poet David Whyte writes,

Joy may be made by a practiced, hard-won achievement as much as by an unlooked for, passing act of grace arriving out of nowhere; joy is a measure of our relationship not only to life but to death and our living with the constant companionship of our immanent disappearance, joy is the act of giving ourselves away before we need to or are asked to, joy is practiced generosity.

And then he says,

To feel a full and untrammelled joy is to have become fully generous; to have allowed ourselves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear: a disappearance, a giving away, overheard in the laughter of friendship, the vulnerability of happiness itself and the vulnerability of joy’s imminent loss, felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source, the claiming of our place in the living conversation, the sheer privilege of being in the presence of the ocean, the sky, of two people dancing at sunset—and from nowhere, a sudden surge from the unknown tide now filling our lives—I was here and you were here—and together we made a world.

I was here and you were here—and so were the rocks and trees and mountains and flowers and animals—and together we made a world.

When Paul wrote to the Philippians, he made it clear that joy was a choice:

Rejoice in God always! Again I say, rejoice! Let your joy show in your treatment of all people. God is near. God is here.

Let your joy show in the way you treat people. Another translation reads, “Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them.”

Repeat the sounding joy.

Now I am going to repeat some things you already know, but they are worth saying again.

Joy is not a feeling; it’s a choice. It is a choice to engage, to listen, to pay attention. David Whyte is right when he says that sometimes it catches us by surprise, but we still choose to be open and receptive, and we have to choose to repeat what is sounding around us. And that is true of all the things represented by our Advent candles: hope, peace, joy, and love.

All of them are choices. Acts of will. Things we have to decide to do. So are cynicism, conflict, self-centeredness, and apathy. Joy is not the only song being sung around us. If we choose, we can see the world as one where survival is what matters most, which means I have to get what’s mine because it’s everyone for themselves. Though we hear that song blasted at high volume all around us, it is not the song of creation. It is not the song we were made to sing. It is not the song carried by the magnificent moon that hung in the sky last night, or by the smiles we share with one another when we sit together in coffee hour.

To choose to repeat the sounding joy—or the sounding hope and peace and love—is not being naïve about the reality that life is painful. Being joyful does not mean to ignore our grief. To choose joy is to go beyond our fear, to dig deeper than our sorrows, and to trust that at the bottom of life the joy and hope and peace and love are still sounding.

It is also to choose to help others hear the song. As I said at the start, we are repeating what we hear all around us. When we see others—perhaps even those sitting on the pew with us—who can’t hear the song because it is being drowned out by other noise, we can choose to sit with them and sing until they can sing it too.

God is near. God is here. So are we. God is with us.

As Ginger likes to say, life is holy and life is quick. The days we have as part of the choir of creation don’t last long, but they are rich and crammed full of the presence of God—so say the rocks and the trees, the squirrels and the sunshine, the full moon and our broken hearts.

God is near. God is here. God is with us. Repeat the sounding joy. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: coffee shop duet

coffee shop duet

what I saw first was
her solitude as she sat
on the bar stool matching
the expression of the
coffee shop’s blank wall
but when he entered
she turned and so did
the light around her
they greeted like good
friends talking as they
shuffled coats to make
room for themselves
he took the stool next
to her which left him
much taller than she
but she widened
the frame by moving
to a taller stool as
he settled in without
catching the detail
then he turned to her
and they were eye to eye
she smiled he smiled
and then she kissed him
with a spark and a giggle
what I saw then was a
dance meant not to
be a performance
but a witness of one
another in the middle
of a coffee shop on
a winter afternoon
when they thought
no one was watching

Peace,
Milton

 

advent journal: I could hear the rain

I could hear rain

in mid-December
days die incrementally
losing light almost
from the crack of dawn
suffocate them with
a blanket of clouds
and the only light
that lives is artificial
still light is not life
or so I was reminded
when I realized
I could hear the rain
not just the storm
but the tap dance
of drops on the patio
that had been silent
for so many showers
however dark the day
I could hear the rain

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: interstices

interstices

the space between trees
the crack in the mortar
the time between floors

if we took away the spaces
between us among us
the universe would
collapse into a fist

the rest between notes
the breath before words
the pause to ponder

intervening emptinesses
waiting to be noticed
to be seen as something
other than nothing

the gap in the fence
the break in the clouds
the width of a room

what we see as vacant
is what connects us all
the substance of things
thrives in our in-betweens

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: ritual in search of significance

ritual in search of significance

the last thing I do before
I go to bed is to disconnect
my implant and hearing aid
and enter into quietness

it is necessary action
because both my batteries
and my body need to recharge
so I settle into silence

each device has a cradle
where it rests for the night
the batteries nestled as well
none of us hearing a thing

as my motions become more
deliberate and intentional
I find myself looking for
words to mark the moment

as I break open the casing
press the battery into place
and close the containers that
will hold things for the night

most of them can go unspoken
since I am not able to hear
better to trust than to speak
and let the silence do its work

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: themeless

The woman in my poem from a couple of nights ago made it into my sermon today. She has still been on my mind.

___________________________

Sometimes when I look at the lectionary passages I wonder about the committee that put it together. I learned this week that the Common Lectionary for Protestant churches only came about in 1983 and was revised in 1992. I didn’t realize it was so new. Part of the idea behind it is that the scriptures for each week are somewhat thematic, which is difficult, whether we are talking about the Bible or about life because neither fits easily into thematic systems.

We are in the third year of the three-year cycle and, at least for Advent, the chosen passages are heavy on foreboding and warning about what is coming, when it comes to the applied theme, as though the point is what’s coming and not where we are right now. But, regardless of what’s coming, we don’t get to be anywhere but where we are right now—here in the middle of everything, without a clarifying theme.

As most of you know, I went to the hospital on Thursday for my ablation.

They called me on Wednesday and told me to be there at 8:30 am, so Ginger and I did as they asked. It did not take long to get checked in and then they took me to the pre-op ward where they said it would be about forty-five minutes to an hour. They came back three more times and said the same thing until I finally went into surgery around 1 pm.

I was frustrated and tired, but I also knew I needed to get my heart back in rhythm, so I waited.

Some time after we arrived, a woman was put in a room (well, a small space with a separating curtain) across from us. I didn’t even know she was there until she became vocal about her frustration and said, loudly, “I want to leave.” Everyone in the ward was there because of some heart issue that needed correcting. But whatever concern she had that had brought her in was overwhelmed by her fear and anger. She was determined to leave.

A doctor came to talk to her but did more talking than listening, maybe because she was startled by the woman’s resolve, or frustrated because she couldn’t fix the situation. I don’t know. But it became a power struggle. When the woman persisted, we could hear the doctor say, “You’re being rude,” which didn’t help things.

Then a nurse came and listened first and then told the woman what she needed to do to leave the ward, which she did. Both Ginger and I were saddened by what happened because the woman looked so despairing as she left. The whole scene was sad.

She has stayed on my mind as I worked on this sermon and thought about our lighting the Peace Candle this week because she was not at peace with herself or with her circumstances. I’ve been trying to figure out how to preach a sermon that would mean something to her—and, hopefully to us as well.

As I said earlier, life, in the moments we are living it, doesn’t necessarily fit nicely into a theme, whatever the theme is. We tell stories that make sense of it when we can look back and see connections that weren’t so apparent in the moment. We look back at the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth and retell them to focus our hearts, but it I imagine Mary or Joseph or some of the others must have thought, “I want to leave” as heavenly messengers appeared and their worlds crashed in around them.

They didn’t have an Advent wreath to tell them what week it was and which candle to light next.

Neither did Paul or the people in Philippi, which was a young fledgling congregation. All of the churches who received the letters in our Bible were first generation congregations. They didn’t know what church was. They didn’t have bylaws to guide them or minutes to read. They were people responding to God’s love and trying to figure out life together.

As confident as Paul sounded when he wrote, he was in and out of prison because of his actions and was also learning as he went. In almost every letter he sent, he began with a statement of gratitude similar to the one we read this morning: “I thank my God when I remember you, for you fill my life with joy.” And then he said, “This is my prayer: that your love might become even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight.”

His prayer reminds us that love is an act of will—something we do on purpose. And it is something we can practice. We can get better at it. We can grow in insight and tenacity.

One of the Advent figures every year is John the Baptist, whom the gospel writers say reminded people of the old school prophets who called people to straighten out crooked roads and make the rough places easy to travel through. After being on some rough roads myself lately, I hear those words as a call to love with insight and determination.

We do not have to go far to find folks who are hurting and who are not sure what is going to happen next. We just have to look around the room. And we need to risk asking questions of one another to find out what is going on, even as we need to risk asking for help even when we know no one can make all the pain go away. Perhaps the starting place is to first make sure we are vocal about our gratitude for one another and for the chance to be here together.

In this season, we are telling the story of God’s willingness to incarnate love so we would know we are not alone. As the angel said to Joseph, “Call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.” God is with us and we are with each other. Right here in the middle of it all. That gives me hope.

We light the candles and we sing the songs and we tell the stories not because they organize Advent into a cohesive system that answers all our questions and lets us know what’s coming. We do all of these things to remember God has chosen to be here in the middle with us, no matter what we are feeling or facing, no matter how badly we wish we could leave. God stays and invites us to do the same. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: breakfast potatoes

breakfast potatoes

in our favorite
breakfast joint
on the way home
from the hospital
for the first time
in a long time

I heard the sound
of one chef chopping
the rhythm of the knife
beating in my new ear
a sound my brain
knows by heart

when I caught his eye
I asked, “making soup?”
“chopping potatoes,”
came the answer
“we always need
breakfast potatoes”

it was almost noon
his preparation was
an act of fleeting hope
he will have to do
again tomorrow
after breakfast

hope can’t be
stored any more
than hash browns
the beat of blade
on cutting board is
what keeps us alive

Peace,
Milton