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finding the words

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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21
finding the words

I feel stuck today.

I have work to do, manuscripts to edit filled with words by authors who have done their best to make meaning out of faith and life in these days, and I feel like I am treading molasses, doing all I can to keep from drowning.

Toni Morrison died yesterday. She did things with the English language no one else had done or, perhaps, could do. Madeleine L’Engle said our vocabulary shrinks during wartime. Since we appear to be a nation who has chosen to be perpetually at war, we run the risk of losing words that matter the way we are losing species due to climate change; now we have lost one of our vocabulary generators—one of our peacemakers. In the wake of three mass shootings in a week, her death highlights my struggle to find words of my own.

I have been silent in this space since Lent ended. I suppose another way to say that is since Easter, but any sense of resurrection is hard to come by. I have posted poems and articles on Facebook and watched as some of those have flamed up as people have made assumptions beyond my words, or quickly divided into us and them. The volume level of the vitriol makes me feel like I trapped between floors in an elevator blasting death metal.

A couple of weeks ago, I preached using the lectionary texts for the day, which told of Abraham’s bargaining with God over finding a few good people in Sodom and Jesus’ parable of the friend at midnight. The Genesis account says God was fed up with the sins of Sodom. One Jewish commentator explains:

The prophet’s description combined with what the Torah reveals to us gives us the following picture: the people of Sodom insisted on preserving their high quality of living to such an extent that they established a principle not to let the poor and homeless reside in their city. Consequently, when a destitute person would come seeking help, they would revoke his right to any welfare–-public or private! By doing this they figured they would preserve an elite upper class community who would monopolize the profits that the bountiful land offers without having to distribute any revenues to a “lower class” of people.

It sounds way too familiar. Abraham started by asking if God would see the city as redeemable if he could find fifty people who were seeking justice. Almost as soon as he had asked, Abraham started renegotiating, and kept at it until his plea with God was that even five righteous people in the city of Sodom made it redeemable and was enough reason to have hope that things could change. God agreed.

I’m not sure I can think of a time in human history when the forces of justice appeared to be in the majority, and yet justice rolls down like water—like a tenacious river.

In the parable, Jesus describes someone who is surprised by a traveler and goes to a friend’s house to ask for food. It’s the middle of the night. The whole neighborhood is asleep. He bangs on the door and the friend refuses to get up, but the man is unrelenting. Most translations say he was persistent, but a better word is shameless. He didn’t care how he looked. He had someone to feed, he needed food to meet that need, and he knew who had food to share. Reputation or appearances didn’t matter.

I’ve mostly heard this story presented as an analogy, but it is as parable. It is not as simple as saying we keep knocking until God answers—which is also problematic theologically. The story has come alive for me in these days if I see God as the shameless one who is crying, “Sleeper awake!” And I am the sleeper.

The living of these days calls us all to examine what we have to offer a relentlessly compassionate God and a hurting world. The answers are multiple and disquieting. We have to be willing to look at changing how we speak, spend, and share. We have to let the common good matter more than individual privilege, comfort, or—dare I say it—rights.

Before I break into too much of a sermon, I want to get back to my purpose in this post. One of the things I have to offer is my writing. In the early years of this blog, my goal was to write every day. I wanted to feel like a writer. I wanted to be a writer. A writer writes. The reasons why I have not been as consistent are layered; I have mostly kept my promise to myself to write daily during Advent and Lent, as a spiritual practice. My sense of stagnation calls me to do what I know will wake my heart, and that is to write daily.

I will push beyond the debilitating cacophony of the culture. I will push beyond my sense that what I have to say is only heard by a handful. I will write something every day, as both my way of waking up to God’s tenacious abandon and to also join in God’s shameless knocking.

As I try to figure out how to end this post, an old lyric of mine comes to mind.

will you find me?

will you find me in the dying of the day
and remind me what I have to keep and what to throw away
the words that I can lean on when there’s nothing left to say
will you find me in the dying of the day

will you find me in the darkness and the doubt
and remind me what I have to hold as I feel tossed about
show me what flickers in the shadows that never will go out
won’t you find me in the darkness and the doubt

lord have mercy
christ have mercy
can we still sing if hope is ground to dust
lord have mercy
christ have mercy
I’m not looking for dead certain
I only need to trust

that you’ll find me when the battle has been lost
and remind me I am on your side no matter what the cost
stoke the fire that burns inside my heart to stand the killing frost
will you find me when the battle has been lost

oh, will you find me . . .

Peace,
Milton

go tell the others

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4
go tell the others

tell the others

on a hillside of tombs
only one stone was moved
life surrounded by death
which is how it feels

this morning with news
of “coordinated bombings”
(should that be a phrase)
christ is risen, yes

and we are dying
both things are true
we have to live with that
we have to live with death

mary saw the empty tomb
and was not relieved
until she saw the one
who called her by name

here among the ruins you call
my name and I’ll call yours
in coordinated compassion
(that’s a phrase we can live with)

death is sure christ is risen
we are named by a love
stronger than death and bombs
that will have to do

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: between noon and three

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4
lenten journal: between noon and three

between noon and three

I sit quietly
I waited for words
but they chose
to be quiet
what is there
to say?

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: sleep

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
lenten journal: sleep

I get it.

I understand why the disciples couldn’t do it. Think of what they had already been through. First, Judas left after a confrontation with Jesus that made it pretty clear the rest of the evening was not going to be a celebration. Jesus followed by offering bread and wine as both meal and metaphor—and neither were comforting. And he told Peter he was going to epically fail in the face of his biggest challenge. Three times. Then they went out to the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.

All Jesus asked them to do was stay awake with him while he prayed. The gospels say their eyes “were heavy with sleep.” It wasn’t about being tired. They were overwhelmed. Sleep was a way out.

I started by saying I get it because sleep is my escape. When I have been in the depths of my depression, sleep was a way out from under the weight. In many ways, I feel fortunate. I know others for whom sleep is elusive or punishing. For me, it is a respite. A break—though one that usually takes me over rather than me deciding it’s nap time. When things are more than I can take, I fall asleep when I sit still for a few minutes, which makes it not so hard for me to put myself alongside Peter, James, and John sound asleep among the olive trees.

I am not trying to make excuses for them. I just understand.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: there, there, grieving . . .

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: there, there, grieving . . .

I was looking for a poem to post the other day and found one titled “There, there, grieving.”

I remember a friend whose father died many years before mine recalling a trip to a mall soon after his funeral where she was overwhelmed by the fact that everyone was acting like it was a normal day when her father was dead. It wasn’t normal to her. Normal never happened again.

I understood her story once my father died. My first day back at the Apple Store in Durham I found I couldn’t talk to customers. My manager was compassionate enough to tell one of my co-workers, who was also a friend, to leave the store and sit and talk until I was ready to come back. We were gone over an hour.

The stories came back to mind as I read posts about Notre Dame on Facebook and the corresponding comments and replies that often flared into skirmishes. Some grieved the loss of the cathedral, or what the cathedral stood for. Some grieved that such an outpouring came for Notre Dame—particularly the huge amount of money pledged for rebuilding, but not the churches in St. Landry, or for Puerto Rico, or for the Brazilian museum, or for Flint, Michigan. The emotions ran from anger to compassion, from righteous indignation to self-righteousness, from questioning to indictment.

All of it, it seems it, paints a picture of grief.

That an eight-hundred-and-fifty year-old edifice that has survived wars and revolutions and who knows what else could burn up in a matter of hours feels like an obvious metaphor for the days in which we live, whether we are talking about the state of our government, the impact of climate change, the incendiary nature of public discourse, the weaponization of religion, or the increasing gap between those who have and those who do not. It feels like we are burning down our own house that took millennia to build—except this time we are all stuck inside.

Our grief is about more than Notre Dame, though the cathedral is part of it. One of my friends who is a hospital chaplain and has spent the last year learning about trauma theory says she thinks life for most of us is an unending Holy Saturday. We know more about grief than we do about resurrection.

I think she’s on to something.

Tomorrow begins what I think are the three heaviest days of the Christian calendar. Over the past year, I have read the gospels as grief stories. When you start looking for it, I think it shows up almost everywhere. As we move from Jesus saying goodbye to his friends whom he knew did not see what was coming, to the agony of his torture and sexual assault and execution, to the silence of Saturday that must have carried the gravity of a black hole for the disciples as they despaired and argued and clamored for meaning to . . . well, that will have to wait.

We live in a world consuming itself with grief among other things. We are all hurting. We are all unsure. Many of us are lashing out. Many of us, then, are fighting back. Whatever normal we think we have lost is not going to happen again. Whatever resurrection looks like, it will not be restoration. Things will not go back to the way they were anymore than they did for the disciples.

“Blessed are they that mourn,” Jesus said, “for they will find comfort.” Then he said, “Blessed are those who make peace around them, for they will be called children of God.”

We are all mourning. We are all children of God, siblings who are all created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. Perhaps offering comfort and waging peace should take the place of correcting one another and exacting judgment.

There, there, grieving. Yes, indeed.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: bearings

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2
lenten journal: bearings

bearings

as soon as the fires went out we started
looking for hope among the ruins

sharing the same picture over and over
of the cross beaming in the rubble

I read that the towers were still standing
that the organ had not been destroyed

heard promise after promise of rebuilding
even as the smoke still whispered to the stones

to grasp the geography of being alive
we need some direction when our maps burn

and we are left with an on-the-fly cartography
from some that act as though explanations

will help us find our way somehow but
too many times those roads run to retaliation

against those whose hearts are broken too
though maybe for different reasons than ours

someone meant to burn the churches in St. Landry
suicide bombers want to damage all they can

some of them in lands more ancient than Paris
but what does it mean that a cathedral

could become charred ruins by accident
is there anywhere safe on our map

never mind I know the answer to the
last one even though we hardly say it

none of us has a map to safety
the best we can do is stick together

and I don’t mean just you and me
we need more than us to make our way

there is no map to safety I said that
already but it seems to bear repeating

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: everything in the fire

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
6
lenten journal: everything in the fire

Earlier this afternoon I received this e-mail message from our church office:

Dear Church family,
We have been made aware of a family of four (mother, father, and twin boys age 7) who lost everything in a fire. Below is a list of what is needed for them to rebuild their household.

Linens:
Twin Sheet sets for each boy—probably 2 each
Queen Sheets for the parents
Lots of Towels and washcloths
Bed Pillows
 
Kitchen:
Everything except a microwave and toaster . . . for example
Pots and pans, silverware, cutting board, knives, plates, cups, bowls, mugs
can opener, cooking utensils, spatulas, whisks, large spoons, forks etc
soaps and clean supplies including mops and sponges
 
Furniture
Coffee table, end tables
lamps—floor and table lamps
TV
 
Clothes and shoes:
For the boys:
shoe size 13, clothing 8
shoe size 12, clothing 7
 
Father:
Extra large- for shirts and jackets
40 inch waist, 32 length for pants
Shoe size 10
 
Mother:
shoe size: between 8 and 9
extra large for tops and jackets, etc

Ginger and I spent some time talking about what we had that we could give to help the family start to get back on their feet. It was some time later before I heard about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I got to go there twice. Once, as a kid coming back from Africa with my parents and once with Ginger soon after we married. Northwest Airlines inaugurated direct Boston to Paris flights with a $99 introductory price, so we went for four days. While we were in the cathedral, we attached ourselves to a tour group. The guide was describing the two huge and stained-glass “rose” windows and commented that the “new one” has installed in the mid-1500s.

I never imagined it wouldn’t be there, any more than I never imagine I would turn the corner on to Church Street and find our house burned to the ground. When I try to imagine what it feels like to lose everything in a fire, I think about how it felt when my father died. I wanted to call everyone whose father had died before me and say, “I’m sorry. I meant well. I just had no idea this is how it felt.”

My heart aches for Paris and for the people for saw Notre Dame as their church home, which I am sure includes more than just Parisians. I wish I could go through my closet and offer something tangible that would matter the way I can share my belongings with the people here in town.

On another level, there is something lost to the world in the burning of a building that has been here for almost a millennium. It is, both factually and metaphorically, an altar—a stack of sacred stones. The people who are the church that meets there will go on, yes, and it is also not that simple. The family who lost everything will not be the same family in their new space any more than the parishioners at Notre Dame will be the same church going forward. We are defined by the spaces we build around us. We are who we are in context.

Part of our American context was the arrest of a white man in Louisiana who burned three historically black churches in two weeks. The story made bigger news when he was arrested than it did when the churches burned. Even as I write that sentence, I am aware that I know far fewer details about the fires in Louisiana than I do about what is happening in Paris. I read far fewer Facebook posts expressing either grief or outrage. It just didn’t matter as much beyond the borders of St. Landry Parish.

The five fires differ only in scale. All of them are stories of families who have lost everything. The resounding truth that burns at me is their losses do not affect us unless we choose for them to do so. Love is an act of will, not an emotional response.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: sing to the night

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1
lenten journal: sing to the night

When I sat down tonight to write, what came to mind are songs that capture the emotions of the week ahead, which are not easy feelings. Part of the challenge every year for me is not to rush to Easter but to take the loss and grief seriously. Here, then, is my soundtrack, which is by no means exhaustive.

To set the tone, I’ll begin with Guy Clark’s “The Dark.”

in the dark you can sometimes
you can hear your own heart beat
or the heart of the one next to you
the house settles down
after holding itself up all day
shoulder slumps, gives a big sigh
you hear no one’s foot fall in the hall
that drip in the kitchen sink marking time
june bug on the window screen
can’t get in but he keeps on trying
one way or another we’re all in the dark

James Taylor’s “Lonesome Road” helps me picture how alone Jesus must have felt in the middle of everything coming down.

carry on—never mind feeling sorry for yourself
it doesn’t save you from your troubled mind
walk down that lonesome road all by yourself
don’t turn your head back over your shoulder
and only stop to rest yourself
when the silver moon is shining high above the trees

American Kid is the album Patty Griffin wrote after her father died. “Wild Old Dog” is an amazing expression of grief using a dog abandoned on the side of the interstate as a metaphor for God.

God is a wild old dog
someone left out on the highway
I seen him running by me
he don’t belong to no one now

Randy Newman’s song “I’ll Never Get Over Losing You” is another statement of grief. The video below also carries the story behind the song.

when you’re young and there’s time to forget the past
you don’t think that there’s time but you will
and I know that I don’t have time enough
and I’ll never get over losing you

I’ve been cold I’ve been hungry but not for a while
guess most of my dreams have come true
with it all here around me no peace do I find
’cause I’ll never get over losing you
no, I’ll never get over losing you

I am going to close the set with Andrew Peterson’s “After the Last Tear Falls” because even in our bleakest times, love is still the last word.

after the last disgrace, after the last lie to save some face
after the last brutal jab from a poison tongue
after the last dirty politician, after the last meal down at the mission
after the last lonely night in prison
there is love, love, love, love
there is love, love, love, love
there is love

and in the end, the end is oceans and oceans of love and love again
we’ll see how the tears that have fallen
were caught in the palms of the giver of love and the lover of all
and we’ll look back on these tears as old tales

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: notes from the road

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2
lenten journal: notes from the road

notes from the road

we drove through a fog this morning so thick
we couldn’t see New Haven from the highway
though we could see the road in front of us
at least far enough to keep moving on

hold that thought

The particles of light in sky and sea that
look blue on the horizon is light that got lost
and never makes it all the way from the sun
leaving us with the color of longing

one more thing

small theories are what we use to explain
ourselves to ourselves—how we make
sense of where we come from and who
we think we are but nothing explains it all

and this–

this week I learned about an event horizon
which is another phrase for point of no return
in black-hole-speak but it took me to the
fog, the blue, and my small theories . . .

there’s just so much

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: ship’s log

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1
lenten journal: ship’s log

ship’s log

it seems like a lifetime ago
that we stood on the deck
of the USS Constitution
a still-commissioned vessel 
named
for our defining document
to learn much of it had been replaced
because it was still considered
active—a work in progress

only in museums does it matter
that nothing changes because
sameness is suffocating
every breath we take is
an act of resuscitation
that speaks hope into being
even as our joints creak
and groan like an old ship

every step of this voyage
reminds me that we need help
to ride these wondrous waves
no matter how strong our constitutions
or how well we exhibit courage
so on this day this storm this sea
I am grateful we sail together

Peace,
Milton

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