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sick and tired

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

This week we had a crisis at our house related to Lizzy!, our little dancing extrovert of a Schnoodle who went blind suddenly, or at least so we thought. That story is still unfolding, but in the process of things, she made it into my sermon, which draws from Isaiah 40 and Mark 1.

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This week I have been a part of a couple of unconnected conversations about families with multiple children who are born close together, and it made me think about my family growing up.

We were not a large family; I only have one brother who is twenty-one months younger than I am. As many of you know, both as siblings and as parents, that age gap feels both small and large depending on how old the kids are. When we were both small, it was a lot for my mother, who was the primary stay-at-home parent. She was a good mother for little kids and she loved playing with us, but there were days that weren’t quite as much fun—for any of us—and on those days I can hear her say to my brother and me, “I am sick and tired of you boys acting up.”

I thought about her as I read our scripture for this week because that’s what they are about: being sick and tired, but in reverse: the Isaiah passage is about exhaustion and the story from Mark’s gospel is about illness. They made me think about how much of the Bible is about people who are sick and tired, and about how God shows up in the middle of it all.

As Eric said in his introduction to the passage from the prophet, Isaiah was talking to people who were weary and worn down and were unable to imagine a life other than being weary and worn down. They had allowed themselves to believe that life was hard. Period. They were in exile. They didn’t think they would ever get home. Isaiah offered a word of hope, but it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy.

Have you not been paying attention?
Have you not been listening?
Haven’t you heard these stories all your life?
Don’t you understand the foundation of all things?

He understood their plight, but he didn’t have much room for them to feel sorry for themselves. He wasn’t being callous; he just wanted them to see beyond their exhaustion, to remember God was with them, even in exile. Granted, he could have used a couple of courses in pastoral care. When someone is worn out, “Quit whining” is not necessarily the most compassionate response. Even so, he called them to hear a deep and abiding truth:

God doesn’t come and go. God lasts. God is creator of all you can see or imagine. God doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch a breath. God knows everything, inside and out. God energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall. But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, They run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind.

In our story from Mark’s gospel, Jesus went to Peter’s house because his mother-in-law was sick and running a high fever. (A quick side note: Peter had a mother-in-law, which means Peter was married—something we don’t often think about.) Jesus went into the house, took her hand, helped her out of bed, and, Mark says, she got up and served them dinner. She got back to being who she was.

Sick and tired. Either way, God meets us there and offers presence and hope—which is not to say God makes everything better or that as long as we trust God everything will work out fine. Life doesn’t work that way. There are thousands of faithful people praying in Gaza every day who feel like they have more than they can handle and have no illusion that it’s all going to work out somehow. There are people living in Hamden who feel the same way. If committing our livers to God meant everything would go our way then we wouldn’t have half of our scriptures, and we certainly wouldn’t have the Psalms. They are filled with songs of the sick and tired both calling out to God for help and thanking God for God’s love and presence.

When it comes to the last verse of Isaiah 40, most of our translations say, “Those that wait upon God will renew their strength.” The Hebrew word is better understood as “those who trust in God,” or “those who put their hope in God”—those who are willing to bet their lives that love will be the last word. In reality, that is often easier said than done.

But I think it actually gets lived out something like this:

Friday morning I got up with our oldest Schnauzer, Lizzy!, who is the most joyous little creature you have ever seen, and as I opened the door to let her out I realized she was blind. She bumped into the door. We her to the vet and learned she has genetic glaucoma, which has been chipping away at her eyesight her whole life. She is fully blind in her right eye. We are still hopeful we may be able to keep some sight in her left eye, though we won’t know how much or for how long until we are able to see how she tolerates the drops.

Once we got her pain under control, she began to adjust, as the vet said she would. Not only that, on Saturday morning I got up to let the dogs out. Lizzy! made her way to the top of the stairs and waited to get her bearings. Elena, our newest rescue, passed her and then came back up beside her and brushed her shoulder as if to say, “I’ve got you; come on.” And Lizzy! bounded down the stairs behind her.

Whether we are able to soar above our circumstances, run with the tenacity of a marathoner, take it a step at a time, or simply find the strength to get up and fix dinner, we can help remind each other of the hope we have in trusting God together, a trust that lets us be something other than sick and tired.

Some years ago, I wrote a poem responding to something I saw in myself. I felt like most every time someone asked how I was doing I said, “I’m tired.” In the early versions of my poem I started with

when they ask how you’re doing

say something other than tired
say something other than busy
look for something to say
beyond the shadow of circumstance

But the longer I lived with what I had written, the more I decided that was not what I wanted to say. So I rewrote it and this is the version I kept.

when they ask how you’re doing

it’s okay to say you’re tired
to tell the story of how life
wore you out and left you here
but don’t stop there

sing a weary melody and invite
them to sing the harmony
they’ll know the song
it’s not an original composition

Sometimes life leaves us sick and tired—and when it does, may we remember we belong to a God who does not leave us alone; we belong to one another and can share the load; may we take the hand that is offered and keep going. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

choose people

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

A few years ago, I was speaking at a youth camp and I began by saying, “I basically have one sermon—we are all worthy of love and here to love each other—and I just keep trying to find new ways to say it.” Well, here’s another example. The text was 1 Corinthians 8:1-13.

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For most of human history people thought the Earth was the center of the universe. We thought the sun revolved around us—well, once we figured out we weren’t on a flat surface. But it has been in my lifetime—and in most of yours—that the reality that we are not the center of things really hit home—at least that is what some cultural historians say.

When the first astronauts went to the moon, they took a picture of our planet from space. It was the first time anyone had been far enough away to have that point of view. As I remember it, one of the astronauts said it was a “big, blue marble.”

We have not been the same since. Our planet was small enough to fit in a camera lens. We weren’t the center of anything other than our lives. It is a truth we still struggle to fully comprehend, to fully engage, and it has a more profound impact on us that just our sense of our place in the solar system.

But the idea that we are not the center of everything is a profoundly personal and human truth as much as it is an astronomical one. And so we move from orbits to idols.

I don’t think the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about meat sacrificed to idols because it was a huge moral dilemma. Don’t get me wrong: it was a big deal in the congregation, but things that become big conflicts in congregations are quite often small issues.

I heard recently about a church that split—I mean broke apart—over an apple crisp recipe. There was a recipe that had been handed down and used for years. When a new generation of bakers stepped in to carry on the tradition, they wanted to tweak the recipe. Instead, they ended up with two congregations. Over apple crisp.

Like I said, I don’t think the meat was the real issue Paul was addressing, but the meat uncovered the problem. Corinth was a town known for its temples to all sorts of deities, and those deities demanded all sorts of festivals and sacrifices, which, it seems, often meant meat was served.

For many of the church members, being in places where that meat was served didn’t present a problem. The theology was straight forward: We worship the one true God, so those idols aren’t real deities, which means the meat wasn’t really sacrificed to anything and barbeque is barbeque, no matter who cooked it. Let’s eat.

But some in the church had converted from those other sects and religions. They had believed in those idols, and worshipped them. The gears were not as easy to shift. To eat that meat was to fall back into things they had left behind. Some were hurt by those who ate the meat, it seems; some were angered; some felt betrayed or ignored. For some, it was a dangerous invitation.

So Paul said, “Choose people over steaks.” Don’t let the church split over dinner. If you know what you are doing is causing damage to someone else, don’t do it. Your rights are not the most important thing; our relationships are.

Paul, as you can see, was not an American.

As Americans, we were taught early that we have “inalienable rights,” rights that cannot be taken or given away: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (I love the last one: you have the right to try and be happy.) Over time, that has evolved into a strong sense of individual rights, which far too often is interpreted to mean something like, “I have the right to do what I want,” which is not an untrue statement, necessarily, but it is an incomplete one. Life is rarely, if ever, about just me.

As you have heard me say more than once, life and faith are team sports. How we play nicely together has to do with how we pay attention to the impact of our words and actions, regardless of our intent, or what we think we have the right to do.

In the scenario described in our scripture passage today, those who ate the meat didn’t think it was a big deal. They assumed that if it wasn’t a big deal to them, then it wasn’t a big deal, period. Paul questioned their logic, reminding them that their perspectives weren’t the center of everything. He wasn’t saying they weren’t free to eat the meat, he was asking them to consider more than just the menu. They were also free to choose not to eat the meat and strengthen the relationships within the congregation.

Why not, then, choose the option that frees someone else as well?

When we lived in Durham, North Carolina one of my favorite places to meet people to talk or hang out was Fullsteam Brewery, which was in walking distance of our house. The people that owned it created an atmosphere of belonging that just made me want to be in the room. One of my good friends there was in recovery. We got together often to talk and work on creative projects together, but when I met with her I did it at a coffee shop nearby. I chose supporting her recovery over hanging out in my favorite gathering place.

But then you get to the apple crisp and it’s a different kind of digging in. That church didn’t split because the recipe wasn’t a big deal; it was, to both sides. Now I am choosy about my apple pie (I prefer pie over crisp myself), but whatever was going on in that church was not really about apples. Truth is most every congregation has stories—maybe not as dramatic as this one—about people who have left the church because of something where people got dug in and it became a power struggle. Folks made being right or being in charge or being whatever they thought they had to be over choosing each other.

And that is what it boils down to: choosing each other.

Many years ago, I heard a work colleague trashing Valentine’s Day because, he said, “it was a Hallmark holiday made up to get us to spend money on flowers and chocolate.” He didn’t say it to start an argument, but I felt the need to respond. What I said was, “I don’t know that I need to defend Hallmark, but I figure any chance I have to let Ginger know I love her is worth taking, so happy Valentine’s Day.”

Whatever the issue, whether it’s the apple crisp, or how things are stored in the kitchen, or what color we paint the trim, or whatever might come up that we find ourselves feeling either entitled to do or somehow desperate to hang to, why not choose, instead, to find a way to say, “You matter more to me than how we clean the coffee pot.”

Life is not a battle, or even a series of skirmishes, unless we make it so.

Why not take the chance to say, “I love you,” in a tangible way?

Whether we are talking about life together here at church, or in marriages, or families, or friendships—whatever the relationship is—may we remember we are not the center of the universe. It is more important to be right, or to be first, or to be able to do whatever we think we have the right to do. So Paul wrote, “Sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds.”

A few paragraphs later in his letter to Corinth that Paul wrote words that are more well-known:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Let us love one another every chance we get. Amen.

an important small change

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

I wish someone would write an account of how those who put together the Revised Common Lectionary came to their decisions as to what should be read from week to week, which passages went together, and even what should be left out of the regular three-year cycle.

I’m sure the reason no one has done that is I am a part a small niche market that would doom the book to poor sales, so the mystery will remain largely unsolved. Nevertheless, some weeks, like this one, give us an interesting juxtaposition of two passages that are telling different stories and yet have a sort of strange harmony.

The Book of Jonah is one of the more intriguing parts of scripture, and one that has seeped into popular culture. You don’t have to have grown up in church to know about Jonah and the whale. Jonah was a Hebrew person whom God called to go the town of Nineveh, which was where the modern town of Mosul, Iraq is today. That also means it was inland and west of where Jonah lived. Instead, he ran to the port of Joppa (part of Tel Aviv today) and caught a ship to Tarshish in southern Spain.

Perhaps you know the part about spending three days inside a big fish who spit him up on dry land. Exactly what dry land we don’t know, but we do know God came back and told him—again—to go to Nineveh, which he did, and that’s when the part of the story we read happened.

Despite the fact that Jonah didn’t like the Ninevites at all, they heard what he had to say and responded to God. As I heard another preacher say this week, God even uses complainers to spread the love. Good to know, I suppose. Also good to notice, that one man came to town and changed everything.

In our gospel account, we get a similar snippet of a fuller story. Mark jumps from Jesus’ temptations to John’s arrest—those things didn’t not happen directly in sequence, or at least that appears to be the case when we look at the other gospels. For Mark, what matters most is that John’s arrest seemed to call Jesus to action. It was the catalyst for him to begin his public ministry. And the way he began was to call others.

We often think of John the Baptist as Jesus’ warm-up act, but John had a bigger role that than. Some suggest we would do better to see him as a mentor more than an opener. John was preaching a baptism of repentance; Jesus began by saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives and trust this good news!”—also a message of repentance. They were both saying the same thing.

From the start, Jesus began building a community, as we see in our passage. As he walked through town, he called out to Peter and Andrew, and then to James and John, to leave what they were doing (which was carrying on the family business of fishing) and go with him so they could learn how to catch people.

Mark says all four of them dropped what they were doing and followed him, leaving their fathers and other workers a bit perplexed, I imagine. But, like the people of Nineveh, when they heard a call to change the way they were living they responded by changing. Nonetheless, it was not a Moses-on-the-mountain kind of moment; it was a conversation among friends after breakfast.

When we read either story, we tend to focus on what was happening with Jonah and Jesus, but let’s look today at those who listened to them—and really heard what they were saying.

We talked last week about the word repent, when it’s used in the Bible, having to do more with making a change in your life and less with the sense of shame and regret that the word carries in English. Our stories carry a bit of both. Jonah went to tell the Ninevites their lives were so atrocious that God was ready to destroy them, so they needed to make big changes. Jesus didn’t use the word repent when he called the boys from their boats, but he called them to a drastic change of life: drop what you’re doing and come with me.

In both cases, the people responded. They dropped what they were doing and chose a different path.

So here the questions: How do we learn to open our hearts like that? What does it take for us to change? To repent? How do we break the routines of our lives so the Spirit can flourish in us?

Perhaps the changes we are contemplating do not feel as drastic as it seemed to be for the Ninevites or the soon-to-be disciples, or perhaps they are, but both examples remind us of the consequences of important small changes, because even though both events come across huge in scripture, they are relatively small moments. Whispers. Conversations. Choices.

Let me offer a different example.

Our house was built in 1795, which means, among other things, that we have very little storage space. The early Americans may have fought for freedom, but they didn’t care much about closets. Soon after we moved into our house eight years ago, we bought a bathroom cabinet at IKEA in New Haven.

If you have shopped there, you know that means I had to put it together using instructions translated from Swedish, illustrations that are open to interpretation, and an Allen wrench, one of the banes of human existence. If Hell is a reality, it will include the distribution of Allen wrenches.

I put it together and the door wouldn’t close correctly. The sexton from the church came over and corrected my mistakes, but it the process, the small magnet that held the door closed got lost. I made one unsuccessful trip back to IKEA to see if they had a spare one and then it fell off my radar. The door has hung slightly ajar for eight years.

Until a few nights ago when we saw a commercial for (I kid you not) Monkey Magnets, which are small door magnets that are self-adhesive and install easily. I ordered them, they came in on Thursday, and I fixed the door without telling Ginger. I wanted to see if she would notice, which she did. She thanked me and said, “I feel loved when you do stuff like that.”

My call to repentance didn’t come from anyone as angry as Jonah or as inspiring as Jesus; I responded to a television announcer. Still, the impact on my life and my wife was profound, even with a small change.

The analogy may be a bit strained, but the point is the decisions that can change our lives and open our hearts to both the Spirit of God and the world are not necessarily as enormous as walking away from your job in the middle of your shift. Hearts are mended and lives are opened by important small changes, by moments when we step into God’s call on our lives.

Even our passage this morning describes a small moment: Jesus was walking by and said, “Come with me,” and they did. They could have said no, but they didn’t, and their lives were never the same. What important small changes are calling us? What will we drop, leave behind, pick up, see, hear, or find? Amen.

Peace,
Milton

listen, now

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

I love that every three years the stories of Samuel and Dr. King intersect because they are both stories about listening. Here’s my sermon from this past Sunday.

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Today is the second Sunday of Epiphany if we mark time by the liturgical calendar. As we know, epiphany is a word that means “awakening,” and points us to the sages who followed the star to the manger–although they had no idea it was Epiphany with a capital E. They were simply responding to the calling they felt when they saw the star.

If we mark time by our American calendar, this is the Sunday when we honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tomorrow we will celebrate him with a national holiday.

On the night of January 27, 1956, towards the end of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, Dr. King got a phone call at his home telling him if he didn’t get out of town they were going to blow up his house and kill him and his family. He was twenty-seven years old. He recounted later that he hung up the phone and went into the kitchen to pray. In the silence, he said he heard a voice call him by name: “Martin Luther, stand up for truth, stand up for justice, and stand up for righteousness.” His epiphany that night led him to lead us and to change how we look at and listen to one another, and, perhaps, how we listen to God.

Our text for this morning deals with another call in the middle of the night—this one to Samuel, a young boy to whom God spoke out of the darkness. Let us listen to the part of the story told in I Samuel 3:1-10:

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

The story from the life of Samuel was one that engaged me as a young boy because I imagined him at my age. I didn’t understand how his mother could have sent him to live in the Temple, but I could see him waking in the night and going to Eli, thinking the old man had called him. But the story is bigger than a little boy trying to figure out who keeps calling him.

Samuel’s mother was named Hannah. She had a hard life, to put it mildly. Her husband had two wives and the other woman had given birth to several children, but Hannah had none. As a result, the husband played favorites and discriminated against Hannah because she had not given birth. Hannah went to the temple and pleaded with God to give her a child. Her prayer was so fervent that Eli, the priest, saw her without hearing her and thought she was drunk. Hannah told him her story and Eli said he hoped she got what she asked for.

She became pregnant and gave birth to Samuel. Then she decided the best way to say thank you was to give the boy back to God. We need to understand here that even though the boy was her ticket to some equity in the way she was treated by her husband, she chose a story bigger than her own—beyond the injustice and misogyny of the time. Once the child was weaned, she took Samuel to the temple and left him there for Eli to mentor as a way of expressing her gratitude to God.

Eli was far from being an exemplary priest, to put it kindly. By the time Samuel came to live with him, Eli was old. His sons were priests alongside him, and they all used their positions as opportunities to enrich themselves and take advantage of whomever they could, and they had done so for a really long time, even before Samuel came to the temple.

Our passage noted that a word from God had become a rare thing by the time Samuel heard his name called out in the night. No one thought of Eli as much of a messenger where God was concerned. Samuel went to Eli because he didn’t think anyone else was in the building. The drowsy priest said, “I didn’t call you. Go back to bed.” It happened a second time, and then a third. By then, Samuel wasn’t the only one who was awake, and Eli had a sense that more was going on, even though he hadn’t heard from God in a long time, so he gave Samuel different instructions: “Next time answer, ‘Speak, Lord. Your servant—your follower, your disciple—is listening.’”

Samuel did just that, and his childlike response makes his response to God sound so doable, but to actually say to God, “I’m listening”—and mean it—is a brave thing to say, as we see from the life of Dr. King.

When Samuel listened, God told him to go to breakfast the next morning and let Eli know that his blindness was both a physical reality and a metaphor: he and his sons had lost sight of their calling and their humanity, and they were going to be punished for their abuse of their office. The whole house was about to come down on them. Things were not going to end well.

When they met the next day and Eli asked Samuel what God had said, Samuel didn’t hold back. He chose to tell the truth—his second act of courage and faithfulness.

I had a chance a few years ago to visit the house where Dr. King was living in Montgomery, Alabama when he got the call that threatened his life–and when he heard God’s call that followed it. Shirley Cherry, the woman who was leading our tour, told us the story and said, “He had a choice. Dr. King had a privileged life. He didn’t have to do what he did.” Her choice of words jumped out at me: he had a privileged life. Yes, he got to study at Boston University. He did have some advantages others did not. Yet, when he came to Durham, North Carolina, just days before he was assassinated, to meet with an interracial group of ministers, they had to meet in the private home of one of the pastors because there was not a restaurant in town that would allow them to eat together.

Yet, she said, he had a choice.

The night he stood up to speak to the sanitation workers in Memphis, which was the night before he was killed, Dr. King began his speech with these words:

As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.

He kept saying, “I wouldn’t stop there,” as he moved through different historical epochs and then he said,

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that [people], in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — “We want to be free.”

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that [people] have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. [People], for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.

Samuel made a choice and rose to greatness. Martin Luther King made a choice and was murdered for it. The call to follow God is not a guarantee for everything to turn out just as we hoped, or even that things will turn out well. Not is it a promise that if we follow God we will be set for life.

It is a choice to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. Or not. How things go from there have to do with a lot of other details and variables. What we can control is what we say and do, how we act: what we choose. Those choices are acts of faith because we don’t know what is going to happen next, or because anything can happen.

What if Samuel had chosen to not answer the voice and just pulled his blanket over his head and gone to sleep? Would Eli and his sons have repented? What if Dr. King had not gone to Montgomery or to Memphis? How would that have changed the history of our country?

I am asking for more than historical speculation here. The point is our choices matter. Our faithfulness matters. Answering a voice in the night was a small act, whether we are talking about a Martin or a Samuel, as are most of the things we do when we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. Our daily deliberateness is what makes growth and change possible. Even though Rev. Dr. King went to Memphis and made that speech, the power of the bus boycott was in the daily decisions of people to walk to work, to coordinate rides, to keep encouraging one another to keep choosing justice and kindness and hope.

And that is what is required of us as the people of God in Hamden in these days. We need to listen closely for the ways in which God is calling us to live out our faith in our daily relationships so that we are fostering justice, sowing kindness, and living humbly rather than joining the escalating choir of fear and divisiveness that seems to get louder every day. This quote from the Talmud says it best,

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly NOW. Love mercy NOW. Walk humbly NOW. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

May we be those who do the work of love and justice. May we learn—no, may we choose to be more like Samuel: to still ourselves, focus, and then to say, “Speak, God, I am listening” as we do what we can to answer the grief that surrounds us. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

it swings on a blessing

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

We had our first winter storm of the year over the weekend, which meant we did not gather for in-person worship at my church this week. Instead, I recorded a “service” and uploaded it to our YouTube page—almost all of that an unseen consequence of the pandemic.

The scripture for the week was the account of Jesus’ baptism, which set me to thinking about why Jesus would participate in a “baptism of repentance,” as Mark described it. Here is where that train of thought took me.

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Several years ago, Ginger and I had the chance to go to South Africa with a group of friends. One of the things we got to do while we were there was visit a wildlife refuge where they took care of orphaned animals to try and help reintroduce them to their natural environment. One of the experiences they offered was the chance to play with lion cubs, and so we did.

The baby lions had been taken in after their mother had been killed by poachers. We saw them when they were about eight weeks old; they were growing fast. In another eight weeks they would have been too big for us to be with them and still be safe. We sat down on the ground and the cubs walked around us while the keepers kept watch. One of the cubs was fascinated with my hat. We had a great time and we stayed on edge through most of it remembering that we were playing with wild animals, not Schnauzers.

The scene came to mind as I read Mark’s description of John the Baptist—dressed in camel hide and eating locusts and honey from wild bees—because I felt some of the same tension as I read about this unique and intriguing man in the middle of nowhere attracting huge crowds because of both his wild attractiveness and his invitation to repentance. People kept coming, though I wonder if they had questions about what was happening exactly. It wasn’t like their regular synagogues.

We can see quickly that the baptism John offered was markedly different from what we do. First, it had nothing to do with connecting to a church or a congregation. Second, he wasn’t baptizing infants. (Both rituals of baptism are wonderful; this was just different.) Third, everyone was being immersed, a full-on dunking. (Also not the norm in the UCC, but not unknown; it’s just that most UCC churches are in colder climates.)

The baptism was to signify their repentance—and that is a word we need to pay attention to because what it meant to John and those who came out and how we hear it now are not the same. Our English definition is “sincere regret or remorse;” we repent because we have done something wrong. To those coming out to the Jordan, it meant “a complete change of heart” (as our translation put it), a profound life change. John was talking about creating a moment that had a before and an after.

People were willing to wander miles from town to find this wild man out by the river who helped them trust that God could change their lives, that they were not trapped in their ways, that they could change and grow.

And then Jesus walked into the scene and asked to be baptized.

It helps us to understand the scene if we remember that Jesus and John knew each other. They were cousins. Mary had visited Elizabeth when they were both pregnant. It is fair to assume the boys knew each other growing up. When John talks about the one who was coming, he knew he was talking about Jesus. They may have even talked about Jesus showing up that day. Whether it was planned or not, John was not surprised to see Jesus.

But why did Jesus need to be baptized?

Best we can tell, Jesus was about thirty years old when he went to meet John. In Mark’s gospel, this was where the story started. The others tell the birth stories, but even they drop off when Jesus turns twelve. We don’t know what he did during those years, other than live in Nazareth. Since Joseph was a carpenter, we can picture Jesus being his helper, but that’s about it.

It struck me this week that Jesus wanted to be baptized for the same reason as the other people: to repent. To make a life change. Again, lay aside our definition of repentance that carries notes of remorse and regret and hang on to the idea of creating a moment that has a before and after. Jesus walked into the river and John baptized him.

And Jesus was not the same after that.

His baptism marked the beginning of his public ministry as an adult, and it was not any tamer than John was with his wild honey and camel skin. I say his adult ministry because he ministered in the Temple when he was twelve, astonishing the priests who heard him. His parents responded by admonishing him for making them worry because they thought he was lost.

This time, as Jesus came up out of the water, the skies opened, a dove appeared, and a voice said, “This is my beloved child in whom I delight.”

The next thing that happened to Jesus was the same Spirit who delighted in him led him out into the desert to fast and come to terms with himself by facing his temptations. He came back to town to find out that John had been arrested. He began to call his followers, and then he began teaching in the synagogues. He cast evil spirits out of a man, healed Peter’s mother (among others), and then healed a person with leprosy—all before we get to the end of Chapter One.

And it all swung on Jesus hearing the Spirit say, “You are my beloved child in whom I delight”—words of not just affirmation but acceptance: you belong to me.

It all swung on that blessing.

And, at the same time, maybe it didn’t. One blessing doesn’t last a lifetime. (Does it?) We all need reminders.

The temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness were things he had to stare down his whole ministry: to use his miracles to create a following, to take advantage of his privilege, to choose power over love. Perhaps the same is true about the blessing of his baptism; he needed reminders that he delighted God.

Perhaps I’m projecting.

When we first moved to Boston, there was a billboard at the Museum of Science that we saw every time we crossed the bridge from Cambridge back to Charlestown. It caught so much of my attention that I wrote a poem about it.

daily work

The crush of afternoon traffic finds me
in an unending stream of souls staring
at the stoplight. From my seat I can see
the billboard: “Come visit the New Planetarium
You Tiny Insignificant Speck in the Universe.”
When the signal changes, I follow the flow
over river and railroad yard, coming
to rest in front of our row house, to be
welcomed by our schnauzers, the only
ones who appear to notice my return.
I have been hard at work in my stream
of consciousness, but the ripples of my life
have stopped no wars, have saved no lives––
and I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning;
I am a speck who has been found wanting.
I walk the dogs down to the river and wonder
how many times I have stood at the edge
hoping to hear, “You are My Beloved Child.”
Instead, I skip across life’s surface to find
I am not The One You Were Looking For.
I am standing in the river of humanity
between the banks of Blessing and Despair,
with the sinking feeling that messiahs
matter most: I am supposed to change
the world and I have not done my job.
Yet. . . if I stack up the stones of my life
like an altar, I can find myself in the legacy
of Love somewhere between star and sea:
I am a Speck of Some Significance.
So say the schnauzers every time I come home.

John created a moment that allowed Jesus to hear the blessing that changed his life. How do we do that for one another? How do we remind each other that we are specks of some significance? How do we call each other to trust that we are a delight to God and are capable of great love? How do we express God’s blessing so that those around us know they are accepted, that they belong? That we all belong because we are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved?

May we begin this new year by repenting—by making a life change, a before and after moment—to be people committed to blessing, to accepting everyone in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

growing older

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

The story of Anna and Simeon caught me by surprise as I prepared for my sermon last week, taking me on an interesting journey that I hope is meaningful to you as well.

______________________

When it comes to our Nativity scenes, we know the characters pretty well.

At the center, of course, are Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, all swaddled up and laying in the manger. Then we generally imagine the shepherds circled around them, along with assorted farm animals, and above them an angel or two. We even throw in the Magi for good measure, even though they probably went to Nazareth some time later, rather than showing up at the barn in Bethlehem.

It’s kind of a static scene. Not much changes from Christmas to Christmas.

But there were others who were not turned into figurines over the centuries, and two of them were Anna and Simeon, who show up in our scripture for today. They didn’t make it to the manger, but they found their way to Jesus when Mary and Joseph took him to the Temple in accordance with Jewish Law, which is a euphemism for Jesus’ circumcision and also meant the family was in Jerusalem, not Bethlehem.

Simeon and Anna were both old, and they both lived at the Temple, both literally and figuratively it seems. The other thing they shared in common was they both thought they would see the Messiah—the Christ—in their lifetimes, and they had spent those lifetimes preparing to meet him.

We don’t get many details about either of them. All we know about Simeon was that he was up in years and he lived in “prayerful expectancy’ that Israel would get help from God. We know Anna was married for seven years and then widowed for eighty-four. If we assume who was married young, as most young women were in those days, she would have been around a hundred and ten at least.

Both lived in anticipation of God doing something important before they died. And both—once they saw Jesus and held him and talked about him—considered their lives complete. They must have been exceptional people because they were willing to devote their lives to finding God.

Luke paints a lovely scene with these two and the child, but what caught my mind’s eye was the juxtaposition of Anna and Simeon declaring their life’s work complete and Jesus at the beginning of his life growing “strong in body and wise in spirit”—well, just growing, period.

Anna and Simeon were kind, compassionate, faithful, and hopeful people. The point I want to make here is not at their expense. They had lived their whole long lives looking for the Messiah, a singularity of purpose that gave them meaning. They enter Jesus’ story at the end of their time on earth, but Jesus was just getting started.

Jesus kept growing. In the next paragraph of Luke 2, Jesus comes back to the Temple at age twelve, again with his parents, and this time Luke wraps the scene up by saying that he “matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people.”

Anna and Simeon were among the first to bless him because they had spent their lives preparing to meet him.

Yes, Jesus was young and Anna and Simeon were old, but growth is not a function of age, particularly when it comes to faith. That is one of the takeaways at the heart of the Incarnation: God put on human skin and kept learning. Jesus wasn’t born fully formed. He had to grow and mature physically, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally.

We get glimpses of him as an infant and as a child, and then we get a larger picture of what he was like in his early thirties before he was executed for challenging the political and religious institutions to not be so sure of themselves. What we don’t get is a picture of Jesus as an old person. He never grew to be Anna or Simeon’s age.

What do you think Jesus would have been like at sixty, or seventy, or eighty?

It is interesting to me that when I typed that question into my Google search window I only found one article—a nice piece written by Patrick Reardon, a former Catholic priest who became an attorney. He mused about Jesus joining his group of friends:

If Jesus had joined us for breakfast, he would have joined us in talking about memory lapses—Why did I walk into this room?—and about a close friend who died a couple years ago and about a grandchild and about someone we know who’s grieving over the death of a sibling. He would have taken part in our discussion of trying to figure out how to relate to our adult children who, to our great surprise, have lives that don’t have us at the center.

And Jesus would have joined with us in bemoaning our aches and pains and health worries and limitations. And he would have had his share. He was human, after all.

Yes, Jesus was human. So are we. Many of us in this room may find it easier to identify with Anna and Simeon than the baby in the manger, or even, perhaps, to Jesus in his thirties. As inviting as Reardon’s imagination is that would have Jesus sitting down for coffee to talk about his aches and pains, let’s look beyond how Jesus might be like us and ask ourselves what it means to be Christlike at our ages, whatever those ages are.

One of the ways we talk about age is we say we are growing older, as if we are still learning and age is about more than endurance. Anna and Simeon grew older and more insightful. I suppose they also grew more patient as they waited for the Christ to come.

Whatever our age, how are we growing older? What are we doing to expand our sense of God’s presence? How are we becoming more Christlike?

When my mother turned eighty, she bought an electric keyboard so she could take piano lessons. She had played the piano as a girl but had not kept it up. She told my brother and me that she bought the keyboard because she wanted to keep learning, and what she wanted to learn was how to play her favorite hymns. She went to lessons, she practiced, and she learned to play the songs she loved. When she died, Ginger and I kept the keyboard so that when we turn eighty we can take lessons as well.

Often, in our culture, when we talk about growth, we think in terms of accomplishment or progress, as though growth means we have to do more, earn more, make more, BE more. But Anna and Simeon grew by showing up at the Temple every day. In his whole life, Jesus was a never more than a day or two journey from the Temple where he met them. He grew, Luke says, in body and spirit and also in the depth of relationships with God and the people around him.

Regardless of our age, we have room to grow. May we learn from Simeon and Anna and grow in patience and compassion, in focus and devotion, so we can see Christ in ways we have not before. And may we, like Jesus, continue to grow in our relationships with God and with one another. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: transforming love

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

After I printed my last Advent sermon, I went back to save the file and managed to delete the text in the document before I saved it, which left me with nothing. Tonight, after scanning the printed manuscript to a PDF and then copying it back into a Word document, I was able to recreate it without retyping the whole thing.

I hope it speaks to you. Thanks for traveling through Advent with me. Merry Christmas.

_______________________

When I was given an assignment in school, one of the first things I did was to see when it was due and then plan accordingly, which meant figuring out how long I could wait before I had to get started- a habit I had to change at least somewhat as I learned that creativity requires preparation. Improvisation is not the same thing as impulsivity.

Still, I like the adrenaline rush of getting down to the wire and getting the job done.

Advent is a season on a schedule: four Sundays and then Christmas. Except this year today conflates two days into one and has left me feeling a bit like I did in those days before I learned to plan how to meet a deadline. I feel rushed. In our scripture for this morning, Mary is still months away from delivering Jesus and when we come back this afternoon, she is going to give birth.

Part of the panic is the way the gospel writers tell the story. The first chapter of Luke begins with Elizabeth and Zechariah finding out they were going to have a son. Then the angel appeared to Mary and told her she would be the one to give birth to Jesus. Then Mary went to see Elizabeth- the verses we read this morning- and then John was born. Chapter Two, which we will read tonight, tells the story of Jesus’ birth, but by the end of it he is twelve years old and growing; by Chapter Three, he is thirty years old and being baptized by John in the Jordan.

No wonder we feel rushed. And when we feel rushed, we often miss details. We breeze past the familiar stuff, the things we think we know down pat. Over the centuries, the Church has given names to most of these events that make them sound explainable: the Annunciation, the Magnficat, the Presentation, and so forth. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we do. As we’ve talked about before, the gospel writers are often short on details. Even our passage today, which is specific about Mary’s song, casually mentions that she stayed with Elizabeth for three more months and says nothing about why or what happened.

We don’t know how Mary told her family she was pregnant, or how that first conversation with Joseph went when she told him. We don’t know how she dealt with the gossip in Nazareth. Maybe that’s why she stayed with Elizabeth.

Even more, we don’t know how Mary was transformed from the quiet teenager who asked Gabriel, “How can this be?” to the formidable young woman who sang for her cousin about the way God was going to work in her life to take down those in power and transform the world with love.

If we are willing to slow down and look at the details and the gaps that we have, we see that the story we are telling is a tenuous one. There were no guarantees, and maybe no good reasons to believe, that things could happen the way Gabriel said they would. Most everyone in the story is at risk, most of all Mary. She was the one giving birth.

All of that is beautiful and powerful and it’s still kind of heady. That is one of the creative tensions of theology: how do we take big ideas and tum them into something we can feel?

For example, the candle we lit today represents “transforming love.” What do we mean by those words? Who do we think will be transformed? Us? Someone else? What kind of details illustrate how transforming love gets lived out day to day?

As I was struggling to answer these questions in a way that did more than explain, Ginger said, “Tell a story; give an example of what transforming love looks like.”

The first memory that popped into my mind was an afternoon when I was in tenth grade. I lived in Fort Worth, Texas that year because my parents were on leave from their mission work. We went to University Baptist Church, and there I had the chance to be a part of the youth group.

In tenth grade, I was about five-foot-two. I felt short, round, and out of place. (That wasn’t what I looked like, but it was how I felt.) I can remember sitting on the edge of my bed and looking in the mirror and wishing I were someone else. Anyone else.

My youth minister was a man named Steve Cloud, who was everything I was not: he was tall, he was handsome, he was athletic, and, well, he wasn’t me. One afternoon after school I was in his office, mostly because I had nowhere else to be, and because he acted like he cared about me. He called me Flash. Steve said, “Let’s go shoot some baskets.” I agreed and we walked out to the parking lot where a backboard was attached to one of the light poles.

I am and was a terrible basketball player. (I know that surprises you.) I took one shot and missed everything. The ball rolled across the parking lot. “You get it,” I said to Steve, and he did. When he got back to where I was standing, he said, “Let’s go back to the office.” As we walked, he put his arm on my shoulder and he said, “Flash, one day Trish and I are going to have a kid, and we when do, I hope they tum out exactly like you.”
I was transformed by his words—by his love. It didn’t erase my problems, or change many details, but I saw myself differently because of how he saw me. I got through high school on what he said to me that afternoon.

When Gabriel first visited Mary, she responded by saying, “I am God’s servant; let it happen just as you said.” But when she got to her cousin’s house and Elizabeth exploded in exuberance and love—”Blessed are you among women”—Mary was transformed much like I was by Steve’s words. Elizabeth gave Mary a new sense of herself; she saw who Mary could become.

Mary was transformed by Elizabeth’s love in ways Gabriel couldn’t do. He delivered his message and left. Elizabeth said her words and then hung around to watch Mary come into her own.

And Mary became the mother of Jesus.

She raised him. She saw him every day. She fed him. She got him ready for school. She lived out years of details we never hear about so he could see who he could become.
We must remember the story we are telling is not, primarily, about a baby. We are celebrating Jesus’ birth because of the person he became. Two of the gospels, Mark and John, skip the birth and begin with Jesus’ baptism. The Christmas story matters because it shows us how God was transformed by love to not only become human, but to enter the world in one of the most vulnerable ways—as a baby born to a young, unmarried, poor woman in a small village.

God was also transformed by love—by God’s love for us. Let’s not rush past that. God was transformed into a human being by love.

Life keeps moving quickly, whether we are checking our schedules or looking at the church calendar. We only have one Sunday in Christmastide and then Epiphany and the celebration of Jesus’ baptism fall a day apart. Ash Wednesday is on Valentine’s Day this year (that should be fun); and Easter is the last day of March.

But let’s not rush ourselves. We can keep the schedule and still be transformed by the story. The point of worship, the point of being a church together, the point of life is not simply to check the boxes that we did the right things on the right days. The point of opening our hearts to God is to be changed, to be transformed. To leave different than when we arrived. To live and act as if love can transform our world—as if we can transform each other.

One of my favorite songwriters, Jason Isbell, sings,

I know you’re tired and you ain’t sleeping well
uninspired and likely mad as hell
but wherever you are I hope
the high road takes you home again
to the world you want to live in

Life is short, dear ones. We are all on a schedule of sorts; we all have a deadline, if you catch my drift. As time flies, let us ground one another in love, saying the words and doing whatever we can to help each other grow and become those who will help the world to tum. God is always needing to be born. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

 

 

 

advent journal: a faraway christmas

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

One of the cool things about Guilford is a biannual event called GreenStage Guilford, which is four or five days of various live performances around town. This year, one of the spinoffs was a periodic Open Mic at The Marketplace, a local sandwich and coffee shop.

I signed up, of course, because, well, Open Mic, and I decided to read an updated version of my story, “A Faraway Christmas,” which was first written about twenty years ago for a Christmas Eve service in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Since the story is about a town with a Christmas tree in the middle, and Guilford is a town with a Christmas tree in the middle, I updated it again.

I hope you enjoy it.

A Faraway Christmas
by
Milton Brasher-Cunningham

Since we’re all gathered here at this Open Mic,
to hear stories and songs ‘neath the twinkling lights,

It’s still hard to find Christmas—get that holiday spirit
This year did have promise, but, oh, what a year it

has been: full of struggles, and still with the virus—
do you think Christmas still can unite and inspire us?

If we tell the old stories, will they sadden and stress us,
if we say what we miss, won’t that just depress us?

I don’t know–maybe so–but it seems worth a try
to do more than just sit by ourselves and, well, cry,

so I’ll tell you a story in the time I’m afforded
and hope that my effort will somehow be rewarded.

“Twas a Faraway Christmas in a Long Ago Town
of no great importance and no real renown,

filled with people who seemed fairly normal to me,
who worked and who played and seemed happy and free.

They had puppies and children, ate bread and ice cream,
they went shopping and swimming, they slept and they dreamed;

they laughed and did laundry, they danced and they dined,
and they strung Christmas lights on the big Scottish Pine

that grew on the Green in the middle of town,
and when Christmas was over, they took the lights down.

They read the newspaper, the dads told dad jokes,
and some of the children put cards in the spokes

of their bicycle tires, so they made quite a din
till it came time for parents to call the kids in.

Yet for all of the things that kept people together—
that great small town feeling, the Christmas Card weather—

for all of the hope one was likely to hear,
the hearts of so many were held captive by fear.

Others always felt tired, some were down or depressed,
and then some–put quite simply–their lives were a mess.

Some felt pressure from not having paid all the bills,
some were keeping dark secrets that were making them ill;

some felt guilty and thought they were headed for hell,
but the town seemed so perfect, who could they tell?

So everyone kept all their feelings inside,
and all wished for someone in whom to confide,

to say, “Life is lousy,” or “I’ve made a mistake,”
or “Sometimes I’m so sad I don’t want to awake,”

or “I miss my Grandma,” or “I loved my cat,”
or “I never, no never get my turn at bat.”

Everyone kept it in, hardly ever spoke up
until one Christmas Eve, when an old man named Buck

came to turn on the lights on the tree on the Green
and found no one, not anyone, anywhere to be seen.

He stared up at the tree and the lights shining bright,
and alone on the Green he talked back to the night,

“It’s Christmas,” he said, “when I should feel warm,
but I don’t think that this year I can conform.

It’s been hardly two months since my friend passed away;
how can I smile when he’s not here to say,

’Merry Christmas’?” And right then he burst into tears,
and all of the sadness from all of his years

Came out of his eyes and ran down his cheeks,
And he thought he would sit there and just weep for weeks.

His wailing was heard by someone walking by,
“Hi,” my name is Jenn–and I don’t mean to pry . . .”

Buck looked up at the voice and the kindness he heard
Somehow she had helped with just two or three words.

“I’m Buck,” he replied, “and I’m tired and mad,
but I think most of all I just feel really sad.”

She wasn’t quite ready for the truth that he told,
but it helped her feel brave standing there in the cold.

“Thanksgiving was lonely, my birthday was, too.
I guess I could say that I feel just like you.”

So they poured out their hearts, like a sister and brother,
then someone else joined, and then came another,

with a story to tell and feelings to free,
and they all sat and cried ‘neath the big Christmas Tree.

Can you imagine how many tears fell,
after all of the years that no one would tell

how it hurt just to live, how they felt terrified
of saying out loud what they carried inside.

How long does it take to clean out your heart,
to get it all out, to make a new start?

They cried until daybreak, till the first rays of dawn
broke over the tree tops and spread ‘cross the lawn,

in the new morning light Buck could see ‘cross the Green;
he smiled up at Jenn; the whole town could be seen.

They had come through the night, first one, then another
to sit down together like sister and brother,

to pour out their hearts for the first time in years,
and let out their feelings, their sadness, their tears.

Jenn started a carol, the one she knew best,
about joy to the world, and it burst from her chest.

The others joined in, not because they weren’t sad,
but because they’d admitted the feelings they had;

everyone sang along, both the sad and the scared,
Because true friends are found when true feelings are shared.

There’s more to the story, but my time is short,
Of how life was changed I cannot now report,

But it sure sounds a lot like our little town,
With a tree on the green and the lights all around,

What if we spoke the truth, what if we named our fears,
what if we loosed the sadness we’ve tied up for years?

Would we ever stop crying, would the dawn ever come?
And like those in the story, once the tears had begun

Would we sit on the curb, first one, then another,
and talk about life like sister and brother?

We aren’t so different; we’re frightened and sad,
we feel helpless and hopeless, and certainly mad,

But let none of those words be the last on this Night
as we sing songs of peace, and we pray for the light,

Our wars and our worries will not define us,
let’s not let our grief and our sadness resign us;

The walls that surround cannot keep us apart
if we speak truth in love and we open our hearts.

We are all full of feelings in these difficult times,
but let’s see past the sorrow and look for the lines

that connect everyone, with a word or a touch,
let’s look for new ways to say, “I love you so much.”

And this story that came from a Long Ago Town
of no great importance, of no real renown,

Could be ours, if true feelings were what we would say;
and we’d find such a Christmas not so faraway.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: incremental

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

incremental

this shortest day
was spent contemplating
two long-lived lives
alongside of sons
and spouses caught
in the anteroom
of unraveling

that opens into grief

I had no answers
I hardly had comfort
I had only presence
and a few words
a few forgettable words

in the midst of
discussing details
I said something
about depression
my depression

a shadowed stare
dawned in solidarity

nothing got better
wounds are still wounds
words are just words
and not enough
to do anything more
than add a few
seconds of solace

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: erasing

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

Two quotes found me today.

The first is from Meister Eckhart, quoted by Christian Wiman in Zero at the Bone:

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

The second is from Jason Isbell, quoted in an excellent article by Taylor Brown in the Bitter Southerner:

Giving other people the ability to harm you is, I think, paramount in developing as an adult. And that is really difficult to do.

The two quotes appear to exist in separate orbits, though there may connections I can’t see. At first glance–or maybe even second or third glance–they don’t seem to have much to do with each other. But one greeted me this morning and the other tonight as I sat down to write my journal entry after an evening with Ginger of looking at Christmas light displays at the convention center in Hartford. In my little mental solar system, they have criss-crossed like comets, intersecting without colliding, and leaving a trail of things for me to think about.

Eckhart is already a significant part of Advent for me because we have used another of his quotes (well, an adaptation) as the theme of the season:

What good is it to us that Mary gave birth to the son of God two thousand years ago, and we do not also give birth to the Son of God in our time and in our culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.

God is always needing to be born–I wonder how that went down in the 1300s.

As far as his words on erasure, I wished, first, that I had known of them when I was working as an editor. They would have made a hell of an email signature. Then again, I don’t think he was talking about erasing the words of others. He was talking about being willing to change, to learn, to grow, which is where he connects with Isbell’s words about growing to the point as a human being that we are willing to give people the ability to harm us.

One of the books I read on writing many years ago said the best way to learn how to edit your work is to find your favorite sentence and delete it. The logic was if you could do that then you could be a good editor. That might be a little extreme, but it is holds the same idea as Eckhart. I don’t know enough about the chronology of classrooms to know if Meister had blackboards, and I’m assuming he didn’t have No. 2 pencils with erasers on the back end, but erasing carries a strong note of the temporary.

To erase is to trust we have not run out of words. To be vulnerable is to trust we have not run out of healing. Both of them affirm the creative power of life, of humanity, even in the face of doubt and pain.

Since Jason Isbell is one of my songwriting heroes, I have some sense of how hard he works on his songs. That’s a big part of why I love them so much. I’m quite sure it took a lot of erasing to get to these lines from my favorite love song, “If We Were Vampires:”

maybe time running out is a gift
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
and give you every second I can find
and hope it isn’t me who’s left behind

From what I know of Eckhart’s biography, he spent a good bit of time facing charges of heresy, I assume because he kept erasing orthodox ideas and saying things like, God is always needing to be born. Both men chose their words carefully, and I am writing about how much that matters in a blog post that is not much more than a rough draft with a couple of revisions. But what I am chasing here is about more than tweaking sentences, as much as I value a good editor.

As we live these last few days of Advent, I wonder how we can erase the indelible lines of the story we have told over and over and find something as alive and surprising as an infant. As we become accustomed to living in a world (and a nation) that is constantly at war and fear is the common currency, how do we grow into people who are willing to be hurt by others for the sake of all of our healing?

Those are not the only questions; they may not even be the best ones. But they are on my heart tonight until sleep wipes the board clean for tomorrow.

Peace,
Milton

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