don't eat alone

Somewhere along the way, and a long time ago now, I picked up a quote that has stuck with me: “The first rule of theology is there is a God and it’s not me.” I have no idea who said it, but it continues to ring true and it seems a fair number of Bible stories shore that up, starting with the whole creation-out-of-nothing extravaganza. God divided the water for the Israelites to escape, sent fire down from heaven to consume Elijah’s offering, and brought the walls of Jericho down. One of my favorite scenes is when Job is full-on arguing with God about all that has gone wrong. God listens, and even shows compassion, but then also challenges Job to remember the first rule by basically saying, “You build a whale or make the sun come up and then we’ll talk.”

This morning we had our annual Christmas Pageant at our church. It was well done and handmade and full of bathrobe shepherds. One of my favorite traditions for this event is the smallest kids, who are barn animals, are allowed to come dressed as any animal they want. This year, I saw a dog, a dinosaur, a lion, and a giraffe. The feeling in worship was expectant and whimsical at the same time. After the service, a woman who had no idea the pageant was happening until she got there, said, “I needed this.”

I did, too, evidently, because it set me to thinking about the astounding understatement of the Incarnation.

As Christians, we read our way back into the Hebrew scriptures to say that Jesus was the culmination of all that God had done before. Jesus was the Main Event. And yet, as Philips Brooks wrote, how silently the wondrous gift is given. If this is the culmination of the whole plan, why speak so softly?

When they asked Jesus to name the greatest commandment, he said what they expected and then said, “There’s a second one that goes hand in hand.” The whisper of Jesus’ birth seems to do the same thing, as though God is saying, “I know the First Rule of Theology, and there’s a second one that goes with it: I’m with you.” So the baby was born and grew up and spent his life in an area not any bigger than the state of Connecticut walking and talking and healing and eating and, well, just being with people.

When I was growing up, I was taught to read the Great Commission—to Jerusalem, Judea, and the ends of the earth—as the call to make a big splash for Jesus. What God really wanted was grand gestures. It’s the same value system that sees the megachurch as more valuable than a small congregation, and it misses the heart of the story.

The truth is all of our human stories are small stories. Yes, some go on to fame and fortune, or even megachurches, is lived hand to hand. Whether that’s hand to hand kindness or hand to hand combat is one of the choices we have to make repeatedly. The more we build distance between us, the less human we become. The point of being human is being together.

I know I have said all of this before. More than once. And that none of it is original. Many others said if before me. Then again, as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, there is nothing new under the sun, or under that beautiful moon that’s out there tonight. He went on to say, “I know that there’s nothing better for humans but to enjoy themselves and do what’s good while they live.”

Micah followed up later on with do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God—all small gesture stuff, just like Jesus. Mary and Joseph were nobodies from Nazareth, the shepherds were castaways in the fields, and the magi were strangers of no reputation. With the exception of Mary (and Joseph to some extent), this was their one big scene. But they are more than extras in the Manger Scene. They lived hand made lives, just like you and me, and Jesus.

Let us lean into the small gestures and make, as my friend Leon says, small waves. They are the ones that matter most.

Peace,
Milton

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

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

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