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advent journal: a consolation of ourselves

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
advent journal: a consolation of ourselves

In last night’s poem, I wrote

would that we had a ladder to
make a consolation of ourselves

I didn’t realize my autocorrect had its own poetic intent until I read the poem again this evening. What I meant to type was

would that we had a ladder to
make a constellation of ourselves

I didn’t change it, however, even though the ladder makes little or no sense with consolation. Instead, I decided to think about what it means to make a consolation of ourselves. I started with looking up the definitions.

constellation: a group of associated or similar people or things.
consolation: 1. the comfort received by a person after a loss or disappointment; 2. a goal scored at a point when it is no longer possible for the scoring team to win.

Though I am not sure I have ever thought of the two words together, I see an affinity as I look at them close together. Though I thought the idea of making a constellation of ourselves was cool—a gathering together to shine—I am grateful for my mistake because to make a consolation of ourselves feels even more significant, and I am taking both definitions into account. I think we are most truly human when we comfort one another. I got a text tonight from a friend checking in because they know the holidays are sometimes fuel for depression. I was thankful for the comfort in their words.

I have to say, however, that the longer I sit here the more the second definition moves into more than sports. A goal when there is no longer a chance of winning.

In one of my favorite movies, Miss Firecracker, Carnelle Scott (Holly Hunter) is a woman in the last year of her eligibility for the Miss Firecracker Contest in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Her sister Elain (Mary Steeburgen) had won it years before and Carnelle is sure she can do the same. She places fifth. In the midst of her disappointment, she gets up to march in the parade. Elain condescendingly suggests that she doesn’t have to go and Carnelle answers, “When you come in fifth place, you have to march behind the float.”

Later, Mac Sam (Scott Glenn), the come-and-go love of her life, says to her, “I’ll always remember you as the one who could take it on the chin.”
Not long after, she says, “I just want to know what I can reasonably expect out of life.”
“Not much,” he answers with a laughing cough.
“But something,” she persists.
“Eternal grace,” he says.

To lean into the second definition is not to say life is a lost cause as much as to point out that winning was never the point. I believe with all of my being that Love is going to have the last word, and have chimed in more than once when someone says, “Love wins,” but that victory will not come about because either God or we started kicking ass and taking names. We make a consolation of ourselves not so we can win, but so we can be together. If we expect victory out of life, most of us will come up short. If we expect love, and we go looking for it, we will make a a consolation of ourselves.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad mistake after all, even if I have no idea what to do with the ladder.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: solstice

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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7
advent journal: solstice

solstice

come sit in the dark with me
and look at that moon that
is so at home in the night
let us reach deep into the
pockets of our souls for
scraps of hope and wonder

come look up at the firefly
stars flinging their light
lay back on the blanket of
dead leaves and sleeping soil
would that we had a ladder to
make a consolation of ourselves

come sing our favorite song
softly into this silent night that
welcomes the first day of winter
the one about being together
no matter what—yes — that one
come sit in the dark with me

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: ghosts and ancestors

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
advent journal: ghosts and ancestors

After I finished writing last night, I was still restless even though I was exhausted. So I decided to watch Springsteen on Broadway, now that it is on Netflix. Once I got started, I had a hard time turning it off.

I’ve been a fan of the Boss for a long time. His first album came out my senior year in high school. I have seen him in concert seven or eight times and never been disappointed. As much as I like to rock, I think he is at his best in some of his more acoustic work, so the Broadway show is right up my alley. It pulled me for another reason—the stories. The performance is less concert than a one-person show. He talked a lot about his family, and about his father in particular, which is part of the reason I stayed up late, I think. My dad has been on my mind. No, on my heart.

In the introduction to “Long Time Comin’,” Bruce talked about his dad showing up unannounced at his house in LA just weeks before Bruce’s first child was born. He and his father had not seen each other in a long time. Bruce talked about them sitting down to talk and his dad opening up in ways he had not. The he said,

We are ghosts or we are ancestors. We either lay our mistakes and our burdens upon them and haunt them, or we assist them in laying those old burdens down and we free them from the chains of our own flawed behavior and, as ancestors, walk alongside them and we assist them in finding their own way and some transcendence.

My father on that day was petitioning me for an ancestral role in my life after being a ghost for a long long time. It was the greatest moment in my life with my dad. And it was all that I needed.

As much as I have been thinking about Dad, the story didn’t send me back into those memories, other than to be grateful once more that my father and I worked hard to find each other. He is not a ghost to me. But as one who was not called to have children of my own, the Boss’s words made me think about the legacy of my generation, particularly as I watch the difficulty we are having in passing the baton to the generations following. We don’t know how to share. We don’t know how to let go of the power. We are not good at learning the lessons of aging. (That’s right, I’m looking at you, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.) We are setting ourselves up to be ghosts rather than ancestors.

I look at friends in Durham who are running their own businesses and feeding people and caring for one another and working hard to build an encouraging and supportive city, then I look at the authors I am working with who are committed to a life of faith and inclusivity, and then I listen to some of my peers denigrate the millennial generation for their “participation trophies” and I think we—the Baby Boomers—have let our pride and our greed get the best of us. And yes, I realize that is a generalization and there are people my age doing good things. Yet, we were the generation that took to the streets in the Sixties and Seventies, that came of age in the Civil Rights Era and the Great Society, and then became beholden to our balance sheets.

This wasn’t a scheduled rant on my part.

When I heard Bruce say his dad had driven cross-country to petition him “for an ancestral role in my life after being a ghost for a long long time,” I wondered how my generation might do that to those who will be here long after we are gone. I don’t want to haunt them with war and debt and greed. I want to be an ancestor that supports and encourages, and also repents.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: donut of human kindness

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
advent journal: donut of human kindness

Wednesdays are my day to go to New York for work, which means I leave the house around 4:30 to catch the morning train in West Haven and I get home in the evening about 7. I am grateful I only have to do it one day a week and I love that I get to go to New York regularly. The day was productive and we had our office Christmas lunch, then I took a little extra time to walk through Bryant Park on the way back to Grand Central Station. By the time I got to my car, I could feel the tiredness settling in.

I came home to a church service. Ginger planned a “Service of Quiet and Light” for those who feeling the weight of grief and loss during the holidays—our version of a “Blue Christmas” service. Christmas Day marks three years since my mother went into the hospital for the last time. For reasons I understand and some I don’t, I am feeling her absence strongly this year.

One of the people who came to the service tonight is a woman I see regularly on the days I don’t go to New York. We hang out in the same coffee shop. When I got to the church, she met me with a bag of Hostess donuts—the little white ones.

“I knew I needed to bring them to you because they were important,” she said, “I just don’t remember why.”

Here’s why. After my dad died, Ginger and I were with my mother at her apartment. I opened the pantry and there were three bags of little white donuts. When I asked Mom about them, she said, “Well, every morning your dad and I would get up, I’d make coffee, and then we’d have some donuts and talk about what we wanted for breakfast.” Needless to say, little white donuts have an iconic presence in our home. We don’t eat them everyday, but on holidays and special days, and on days when we really miss them, those little pastries are a connecting force.

What I didn’t know when the woman handed me the donuts is today marks three years since her husband died. They had a wonderful marriage and she feels his absence deeply. In the middle of her missing him, she bought me donuts because, as she said, she knew they were important to me.

They are even more important now.

Peace (and donuts),
Milton

advent journal: habitation

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
advent journal: habitation

A season isn’t something that befalls you, it is something that you inhabit.
—John Berger, The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger

habitation

in the fulness of time they hit the road
when the days were accomplished
they stayed a couple of nights
then they went back home
when the king got angry
they fled for their lives

when the boy was twelve
they went to the temple
every move of the Spirit
meant a change of address
foxes have holes, he would say
later, but I don’t have a home

even as he inhabited every room
he ever entered as though
he had nowhere else to be
the wind is pushing against
the house like an invitation
to inhabit the disquietude

and not settle for a season
that is something other
than a full contact nativity
once the child is born
we’re going to need a bigger
place with room for everyone

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: memorying

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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8
advent journal: memorying

My dear friend David Gentiles died on December 18 nine years ago. I am still conscious of both his absence and his presence. Going through some old poems tonight I found this one that I wrote after he sent me a note to say he was listening to his John Denver records, a musical love we shared. That old poem heightens my awareness of what his life and legacy means to me.

memorying

it was a short note
an old friend wrote
all he said was
he was “vinlying”
John Denver records
that’s all, yet
the mere mention
of the melodies
sent me “memorying”
across layers of time
to long ago nights
when we played
and sang and talked
of poems, prayers
and promises
and things that
we believed in
I still know the chords
and the words
and the feelings
they have aged
right along with me,
as have the friends,
and I’m grateful
for them all

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: family business

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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10
advent journal: family business

Maybe it’s because I went into the family business.

My grandfather, Milton I, was a preacher. My father, Milton II, was a preacher. I am Milton III. In the spring of my first year at Baylor, I walked down the aisle at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church one Sunday night and told Marshall Edwards that I thought God was calling me to preach, which was the only way I knew how to say it in those days. And I did preach, for a while. The end of my junior year in college, I was called as the pastor of Pecan Grove Baptist Church, a small church outside of Gatesville, Texas. It was between Oglesby and Mound, if you need me to be more specific, along FM 107.

I stayed at that church for a little over four years, until I graduated from seminary. Then I became a chaplain, and a youth minister, and a church planter (of a church that never materialized), and then a high school teacher, and a chef, and an associate pastor, and an Apple trainer, and an editor. Part of what I learned about myself is I’m not built for parish ministry, mainly because I loathe committee meetings and administration. I love to preach, and I feel called to ministry in many ways, but not to pastor. That realization was liberating to me and, I think, disconcerting for my parents—well, that and my moving from Baptist life to the UCC.

So, maybe it is because I went into the family business and then didn’t quite stick with it that I wonder about John the Baptist.

This morning in church, as I was listening to the passage about Mary going to visit Elizabeth, something struck me that I had not considered before. Zechariah was a high priest. He was on staff at the Temple, with a capital T. I don’t know how you would say it in Hebrew, but he was a Big Dog Deal, a member of the tribe of Levi. His son would be born into that lineage, which, I assume came with some expectation that he would carry on the family business. Thanks to Gabriel’s instructions, the boy was not named Zechariah II, but a Levite is a Levite, I suppose.

After Zechariah breaks his silence and blurts out John’s name, we don’t hear anything about the boy until he’s a man dressed in camel’s skin, eating bugs and honey, and shouting in the wilderness for people to repent, acting more like an old school prophet than a downtown priest. There is nothing in the gospels about his relationship with his parents, nor any scenes of them coming out to see what he was up to as he baptized people in the river. But while his father was leading services, he was out railing about repentance.

It is fair to say it is anachronistic to impose our understandings of family systems on those who didn’t know them, and yet the Bible is full of family stuff. Think of the lists of “begats” and how much it mattered who was related to whom. That Jesus was from the house and lineage of David was not a throwaway line. That mattered. Though the story never got told, being of the house and lineage of Milton makes me think it mattered that John was out in the desert and not in the Temple.

Cut to Jesus’ baptism. John dips him in the water and the skies do whatever the skies did and a dove appeared and a voice said, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased,” as John stood next to Jesus in the Jordan. We have no mention of any other family being present. We have no record of how well the two cousins knew each other at that point, though there are volumes of speculation. But as a son who didn’t take over the family business as planned, I have to wonder what it felt like for John to hear those words said to someone other than him. And I wonder if Zechariah ever had the wherewithal to say them to his boy, at least somewhere along the way.

We all inherit the family business in one way or another. We all have need of the blessing, as well. The poem below is one I wrote a long time ago, when my friend Burt Burleson called and asked me for a poem for a sermon he was writing. It seems a fitting close for tonight.

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.

Bless you.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: wait here

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
advent journal: wait here

One of my favorite Advent songs comes from Tom Petty.

the waiting is the hardest part
every day you see one more card
you take it on faith, you take it to the heart
the waiting is the hardest part

Though the baby he’s talking to in the song has nothing to do with Bethlehem, his chorus is right on target. What follows here isn’t so much a song as a collection of verses, if you will—quotes—that will use our chorus as the cognitive tissue to make it an advent hymn of sorts. Sing along where you can.

I know we often talk about waiting as expectation during this season, but in days like these, it feels like the scene that comes to my mind is from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Mr. Tumnus describes the Winter Queen to the children who have just arrived in Narnia and says, “It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter, and never Christmas; think of that!”

the waiting is the hardest part
every day you see one more card
you take it on faith, you take it to the heart
the waiting is the hardest part

In Fiddler on the Roof, Motel, the tailor, speaks just after the villagers of Anatevka learn they are going to have to leave their home for no other reason than they are Jewish.

MOTEL: “Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?”
RABBI: “We’ll have to wait for him some place else.”

Sing it again–

the waiting is the hardest part
every day you see one more card
you take it on faith, you take it to the heart
the waiting is the hardest part

Howard Thurman wrote, “Patience, in the last analysis, is only partially concerned with time, with waiting; it includes also the quality of relentlessness, ceaselessness and constancy. It is the mood of deliberate calm that is the distilled result of confidence.” (Deep is the Hunger 54)

the waiting is the hardest part
every day you see one more card
you take it on faith, you take it to the heart
the waiting is the hardest part

These words from Meister Eckhart find me every year: “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I also do not give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time. When the Son of God is begotten in us.”

the waiting is the hardest part
every day you see one more card
you take it on faith, you take it to the heart
the waiting is the hardest part

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: you say it’s my birthday . . .

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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6
advent journal: you say it’s my birthday . . .

I didn’t write yesterday because it was my birthday. I turned sixty-two.

If my father were still alive, he would have told me I was beginning my sixty-third year. I like both marking the accomplishment—and turning sixty-two is an accomplishment—and seeing it also as a beginning so something new, even as I acknowledge that there are fewer years ahead of me than are behind me. I’m not in any hurry to leave, but I have no desire to live to be one hundred and twenty-four.

Birthdays at our house are days of discovery, at least for the celebrant. All I ever know is Ginger has things planned for the day and I am expected to participate. Since we have celebrated close to thirty of my birthdays together, I trust her.

The day started with a lie. She came in as I was getting dressed to say plans had changed. She and forgotten that Rachel had an early doctor appointment and she had just dropped her off, so we had an hour to grab breakfast at Sunnyside Up, our favorite breakfast spot in town. We got over there to find Rachel and a circle of friends waiting for me, along with a stack of pancakes with a candle on top.

After breakfast, she drove me to Madison, the next town east of us, lead me to the Susan Powell Art Gallery, who was having a holiday art show. “I just thought you needed some time to look at beauty,” Ginger said. I did, I found out.

A half hour or so later found us back on the road, this time to Branford, which is west of Guilford. She meandered around to make sure I was confused and then ended up at Beach Donuts, who have the best Boston Creme donut there is—my preference for a birthday cake. When I got my donut, Ginger said, “Save that for later. Where we are going next, you are going to want to eat.”

And then we drove. We went across New Haven, on to Ella T. Grasso Boulevard (perhaps my favorite street name), and then along the Naugatuck River until we got to Ansonia, Connecticut, an old manufacturing town. We parked and started walking. When we passed Warszawa, a Polish restaurant, Ginger asked if I had ever eaten in one. When I said know, she suggested we picked something up on the way back. (We did—perogies.) Our destination was Crave, an incredible Latin fusion restaurant. Our friend Jeanette joined us. We had all kinds of good things: grilled pulpo (octopus) with chorizo and potatoes, yucca croquettas, chicken croquettas, grits con queso with pulled pork, dates stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in bacon, fried brussels sprouts—you get the idea. Birthday or not, we will be driving back to Ansonia.

We drove back to Branford in time for the early evening showing of Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie about the band Queen. A big part of the story was about Freddie Mercury’s incredible talent and confidence juxtaposed against his profound sense of feeling like an outsider who wanted to belong. So many of the songs brought back faces that had nothing to do with the movie. I saw kids from my youth group in Fort Worth and camps across a couple of decades. I remembered our friends Brent and Sarah’s wedding where “We Are the Champions” was the recessional. As I watched Freddie sing for his life, I was mindful of the scores of people in my life who remind me that I belong. I am deeply grateful.

This morning I searched for “things to do at 62” and learned I am at an age that unlocks several benefits from early Social Security to hotel discounts to cheap lifetime passes to our national parks. But the biggest benefit is a sixty-two years of connections. I have not maintained them all, but I feel incredibly rich for all those ties that I can feel in my life. Reading through my Facebook feed was like an archeological dig of my life, all of the layers of my life in front of me at once.

I realize this post is somewhat self-indulgent and I hope that there is more here than my reliving a wonderful day. My last post was about connections. I have more of those to come, some of which come out of my birthday messages. I feel incredibly fortunate to feel both known and loved.

I went to New York today for work, as I do one day a week. For about the last two years, I have gone into the same Dunkin’ Donuts on Madison Avenue because I wanted to feel like I had a place in the big city. After about a month, the young woman behind the counter looked up and saw me about four people deep in line. She smiled and when I got to the front she already had my coffee poured. We have played that same scene almost every week since. When I get to Grand Central in the afternoons, I usually walk into the market there to unwind before I get on my train. There is a woman at the seafood stand that offers samples. I usually try them, unless its something I am allergic to. She and I recognize each other and enjoy talking. I do not know her name, nor she mine. Today, she was serving shrimp, so I said, “I’m allergic to the samples, but I mostly came by to wish you a happy holiday.” She put down the food and hugged me.

“Oh, merry and happy and everything,” she said. I smiled and went on to my track.

Sam Wells says the most important word in the Bible is with. I think he’s on to something. Being with you certainly makes this life worth living as I start my sixty-third year.

Merry and happy and everything.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: connections

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2
advent journal: connections

Kenny Chesney followed me on Twitter this week. I have no idea why. But Kenny, if you’re reading this, would you mind promoting my books at your concerts?

But seriously . . .

I continue to be amazed by how we are connected. I met my friend Vijaya when we both were new teachers in the Winchester, Massachusetts school system. I go to know Floyd when my friends Joy and Todd were pastors in Cambridge, Mass. He and I were in a production of Godspell together. Today I saw he liked one of her posts. I have no idea how they know each other.

Several years ago now, my friend Anita in Texas introduced me to a friend of hers through Facebook. A year or so later, her friend commented on one of my posts and Anita asked how we knew each other.

I first met Mark in sixth grade at Hubbard Heights Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas. My family was on furlough from the mission field. When I got to Baylor, I saw him again, and also when I got to seminary. My second year of CPE at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas was his first. In October, I went the the Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, New Jersey. After one of the sessions, I went up to speak to the poet. A man was already talking to her. It was Mark. We had dinner together.

When we came to Guilford for Ginger to preach her candidating sermon, I met a woman named Marjorie who had lived in Zambia, which was an interesting connection on its own. When we moved here, she found me at coffee hour and said, “I was in your home in Lusaka. Your father’s name was Milton and your mother was Barbara. I have the cookbook she put together. I was in your home. I remember you and your brother running around the house.” She now likes to say she has known me longer than anyone in the church.

My friend Burt called me tonight on his way home from work. He lives in Waco. We met in Waco, when he was a freshman and I was a junior. That was 1976. In 1986 I called him to say he was the first friend that I had had for ten years where I had known where he was all ten years. With all the moving I had done, and before there was any kind of social media, I had left a lot of people behind. It has been over thirty years since 1986, and he’s still calling.

Annie is also an MK (that’s missionary kid), though she grew up on the other side of Africa from me. My father traveled there, so she knew him. We found each other on Facebook and then, when her husband Chris was sick in Winston-Salem, I drove over from Durham to see them. She and I share a deep love of poetry, among other things.

Amy and Christian live in the Dallas Fort Worth area, but they used to live in Portland or Seattle—I don’t remember which. We met at the very first Wild Goose Festival. They ended up spending the night with us after it was over.

Last year, Ginger and I went to the Minister’s March for Justice in Washington DC. As is my custom at events like that, I was people watching. I saw a woman standing in a purple robe dancing to the music. I tapped Ginger on the shoulder and said, “There’s your friend.” A few minutes later, Ginger walked back and told her the story. It turned out she was working on her PhD and her dissertation was on the role of the translators in the Amistad case. She came to Yale regularly because Yale has all the documents. Since then, she has stayed with us three or four nights a week while she finished her doctorate, which she finished a couple of weeks ago.

I could keep going.

I was writing this evening for a book that will come out next year. (More about that later.) Here’s part of what I wrote:

Grace. It’s the name for the prayer we say at dinner when we pause and realize all the connections that got us to the table. We pause to remember that we would not be here if it weren’t for the unearned connections that keep reminding us that we belong. I picture the movie scene where the jewel their who is trying to break into the museum and has to figure out how to cross the room full of zig-zagging lasers. The thief may get to the gem without getting caught, but the lines that connect us are so thick that we can’t help but bump up against them. Yet, they can become invisible. Circumstances can dull our vision, or even blind us to all that tethers us. We have to be intentional about reminding each other of the ties that catch us. We have to practice staying connected. We have to choose to do so. We pay attention: that’s the cost of meaningful relationship. We have to come by everyday and lay down a fresh coat of grace for one another, offer an unearned reminder that we are all really, really loved. Salvation is not a cosmic gesture as much as a constellation of small actions that carry love. We are saved one day at a time, one day after another.

Tonight I am grateful for all the ties that bind.

If you have a story, share it in the comments.

I will leave you with one of my favorite songs by my friend Billy. We made a connection at a youth camp, thanks to our friend Gene, and ended up not only being friends but writing songs together.

Peace,
Milton

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