don't eat alone

About three years ago, I had a cortisone shot in my knee. It helped up until last December when they gave me another one and sent me to physical therapy. Neither was effective; in fact, the therapy made things worse, so I stopped going. Last month I went back to my doctor and he scheduled an MRI so he could see more of what was going on with my knee. He talked about doing gel injections and the possibility of an eventual knee replacement—at least that is the way I heard it. I went the following day and then the day after that I went to Texas on a trip for work. I saw him again today to get my results.

He led me to a computer monitor to see the images that looked as though they were moving sideways through my kneed in thin slices. The outside looked pretty good. Things fell apart when we got to the middle: no meniscus, bone on bone, even some deterioration. The gel shots would do no good—Jell-o shots might be an option—and we moved to schedule an appointment with the surgeon next Thursday.

I hesitated to write about it tonight because I am still not able to name my feelings, other than to say I am disquieted, or maybe numb. I have been in consistent pain for months and the thought of relief is wonderful. I read some about the success of the surgery and even got encouragement from my brother who had it done many years ago. And I have never had this kind of major surgery. They are going to take out my knee and put metal and plastic in there. Though it has been done for fifty years, I am still working to comprehend it in my body.

I am not one who has minded aging. There are many ways in which I like being sixty-two more than I liked being thirty-two. I don’t feel the need to try and look or act any other way than as myself in these days. That said, the consistent physical pain has made me mindful of my limitations in ways that has been sobering, to say the least, and discouraging. It’s not that I was ever anything other than an amazingly mediocre athlete, though I am an award-winning dancer, thanks to the Raise the Roof Gala a couple of years ago. But I have not been able to do some of the things I love and that feel like me. It has been, shall we say, a profound adjustment.

I know how it happened. In my years in restaurant kitchens, i didn’t pick up my right foot when I pivoted from the prep table to the stove, especially when we were in the weeds. I could feel it in my knee at the end of the night. It was also those years standing under the booming exhaust fan that cost me some of my hearing. One of my favorite places in the world is what left me impaired. I loved those days. There’s a parable in there somewhere. I’ll have to find it later.

Tonight, I am struck by my privilege—that I have health insurance, that I have access to great healthcare, that I have a job that will still pay me for sick days. I am aware of what we learn from pain—how it teaches us to listen to our bodies, how it makes us mindful of our limitations, how it bonds us to one another, how it drives us to relief. And I am grateful for connections—for Ginger who is always with me, for the family and friends I wrote when I left the doctor’s office, for the chance to share with you here.

As I learn more, I will share it. Tonight, it matters to just tell the story as far as it goes.

Peace,
Milton

My father loved the story of Esther.

I guess he probably told it to me for the first time when I was six or seven. I don’t know how many times he repeated it just to get to the part where Mordecai says to her, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

A little over a week ago, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was interviewed by the Christian Broadcasting Network who asked him if he thought Trump was “a modern day Esther.” He agreed. When I first heard the story, I passed it off as evangelical Zionism run amok. I thought about it again today when I read Ginger’s Facebook post:

Trump who talked about and acted on sexual assaults made jokes about Biden touching people inappropriately—seriously! Joking about these crimes and some people laughing—really? Men who think they are powerful must be stopped. I don’t care about status, party, vocation—stop it! The most pastoral care oriented thing I can say is, we are done with this. People who claim faith and don’t seem to care about abuse, must choose faith or abuse—can’t have both. Both women and decent men are needed to speak up, speak out, and stop this insane “ownership” behavior. Stop it now!

Her words were not a surprise to me. I am in total agreement. They helped me realize that I have not been vocal about it. I roll my eyes when I read things like the interview with Pompeo, or allow myself the luxury of not paying attention to Trump’s rallies or Twitter storms, but all that means is I am letting the bully have the run of the playground. I am letting him do damage.

I would like to offer another biblical analogy. The self-proclaimed Christian leaders who speak of Trump as the chosen ones and the Christians who say God can use an “imperfect person” to help reinforce their power and privilege are like Caiaphas and the other religious leaders who allied with the Roman oppression to gain power and to kill Jesus. The Romans knew how to play them and Caiaphas and his minions ate it up. We are seeing a live-action remake right before our eyes. Any so-called Christian who is willing to give Trump a pass on his despicable talk and behavior toward women—not to mention his denigration of Puerto Rico, Mexico, LGBTQ folks, and both mentally and physically disabled folks, to name a few—have sold their integrity and their faith for a promise of power and prosperity. You are killing Jesus all over again.

This is not about whether we are Democrats or Republicans. This man said he just grabbed women by the vagina when he wanted to and now he brazenly mocks others who are being called to account for their behavior, and yet they talk about him as “God’s man for our time.”

He’s not.

When a bunch of self-righteous men brought a woman to Jesus they said had been “caught in the very act of adultery”—though she was alone—he knelt down beside her and wrote in the sand. We don’t know what he wrote. Perhaps it was the Hebrew equivalent of #metoo. I think his doodling in the dirt was an act of kindness: he took the attention off of her and then he turned the tables on the men who, up to that point, considered themselves without sin. Jesus called their bluff and the left.

Then he comforted the woman.

Ginger’s post reminded me that I am here for a time like this, not to be a savior or a hero, but to be a truth-teller, an interrupter. We are here to speak the truth in love and to stand up for those who are being derided and abused and ignored and damaged. I don’t how that will look, other than I am going to make a point to speak up when someone defends Trump. His behaviors are indefensible. They are damaging.

In such a time as this, we cannot stay silent.

Peace,
Milton

I spent last week in Texas on a work trip that centered around the New Story Festival organized by Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren that focused on the myth of redemptive violence, which is a term coined by theologian Walter Wink to describe the belief that we can bring order out of chaos through brutal force. (Insert the history of most any country in the world here to prove his point.) What they offered instead a “seventh story” based on all that connects us.

“The seventh story,” Gareth said, “is a space rather than a closed narrative.”

All of the speakers and performers helped to create such a space. The event didn’t make the evening news, but we changed the world.

In the space afforded me as I traversed North and Central Texas let me catch up with my brother and sister-in-law, and my cousin. For one whose small family of origin has dwindled, the face-to-face conversations were life-giving. I got to spend time with a couple of high school and college friends and some of my authors as well. But there were four encounters I had that caught me by surprise.

I got to see four people who were a part of the youth group at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, where I was youth minister in the 80s. All of them are older now than I was when I was their youth minister. Three of them have children who are older than they were when I knew them. And all of them are dealing with significant hardship in their lives.

I went to the assisted living facility to meet one whose mother is making a long slow recovery from bacterial meningitis. Another is just a year past the death of their father. The third is still grieving from a move across country two years ago that has left them feeling unmoored. The last has endured a difficult year since their spouse was hit by a truck as they stood on a street corner. They have four kids. The spouse is cognitively aware and very much themselves, but still has a long way to go physically. The hardest thing of all seems to be that they have lost their sense of taste and food was one of their greatest joys.

Perhaps what I loved most about the space we found together was we didn’t have to tell old stories to connect. We kept telling the same story we began thirty years ago, which was that we loved each other. I saw the seventh story in a live-action version as I moved from one friend to another.

And that’s how it felt. Once upon a time, I was the adult (I should probably put that in quotes) and they were the teenagers, but this week we were fellow travelers—friends making space for one another to keep telling the story of our connectedness, which also meant to share our pain with one another.

One of the speakers I heard at the festival was Danielle Shroyer, who talked about “original blessing.” (And I also found out we share a Wilshire Baptist Church connection.) “We are in a relationship with God that God started,” she said, “and God is sticking with it.” As people created in the image of God, we are built with the same stick-to-it-ness, should we choose to live into our best selves and trust that love is the story we are most meant to tell and to share.

Even as I write about these encounters, I can name a number of people whom I love that I did not get to see while I was in Texas. I have been mostly off of Facebook for Lent, except to post these musings and some poetry, but even a brief scrolling-through when I got home put me in touch with others who are living through hard days, and some who are celebrating as well. None of us can be everywhere we want or need to be, yet we can be connected. We are connected. We just need to keep telling each other the story so we will remember.

Back in those youth ministry days, Billy Crockett and I wrote a song for youth camp called “Best of Friends.” I even got to sing the harmony part on the first chorus when he recorded it. The song grew out of watching the same folks I saw this week and others befriend one another. I had moved so much growing up that I did not know that kind of love. I watched them and wrote

these days of sunshine these days of rain
we pull together in days of pain
we share beginnings we share the ends
it’s worth it all in these days
to be best of friends

Yes, it is. Thank God.

Peace,
Milton

To paraphrase an old commercial, “I don’t play basketball, but I watch it on TV.”

Actually, I played on one team when I was in sixth grade. We were on leave from Africa and living in Fort Worth. I was on the Royal Ambassadors team for our church. (If you don’t know what Royal Ambassadors are, ask someone who used to be Southern Baptist.) Everyone else on the team had played together for years; I had never played in an organized game. They were really good and had been the perennial league champions. I was then—and remain—an amazingly average athlete.

Late in the first half, the coach told me to go in as a substitute. I didn’t know I had to check in at the scorer’s table. I just walked out on the court and told the other kid I was coming in. The ref blew his whistle; my coach blew a gasket. I went back to the bench. At halftime, he explained the rules to me. With two minutes left in the game, he put me in. Two minutes. I fouled out.

That’s when I knew I was born to watch basketball.

And that’s what I am doing. I am taking these days on the best basketball weekend of the year to watch young men and women do what I cannot, which is always worth doing. That is also the reason I have not written for a couple of days. I’m not sure this qualifies as a spiritual retreat, but it sure feels like one.

Peace,
Milton

someone is always leaving

I was twelve years old before
I met someone who had never moved
and I discovered I was the strange one
because I was accustomed to suitcases

I was twenty-nine before I had friend
for ten years and had stayed close enough
to grow our friendship face to face
instead of recalling memories

I turned forty-five the same year I
lived in the same house for a decade
when the Standells sang, “O Boston,
you’re my home” I could sing along

I am sixty-two and still not used to
being on the staying side of goodbye
the leaving side never got any easier
and yet someone is always leaving . . .

Peace,
Milton

I saw an article several months ago that claimed people quit looking for new music after they turn thirty. The study went back to 2015 and talked about neurological reasons we get dug in and cultural ones as well.

The article came to mind again as I was thinking about W. S. Merwin’s death and what it feels like to lose another formative voice in my life. So many of the voices I listen to have been with me a long time: Madeleine L’Engle, Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, John Berger, Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jimmy Santiago Baca, James Carroll. That is not an exhaustive list by any means.

When I taught high school English, our reading lists leaned into the oldies as well—many of them books I read when I was a teenager: To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Frankenstein, The Old Man and the Sea, The Scarlet Letter. (I hope that list doesn’t cause any unintentional trauma for anyone.) Adding new books was difficult because no one wanted to quit reading the tried-and-true favorites.

As I watch the way-too-early presidential race begin, I am frustrated by the oldies-but-goodies that feel compelled to run. I don’t want someone older than me to be president. It’s time for the Baby Boomers to step aside. I don’t mean we all have to quit what we are doing, or that we can’t contribute; I do mean we no longer need to be in charge.

Somewhere along the way in the last year or so, in the discussions around patriarchy and white fragility, I learned an acronym that has been helpful to my own growth: WAIT—Why Am I Talking. In discussions about how we can make life more equitable and hopeful for all, the best thing I can do is to WAIT—to listen and learn and pay attention. I can speak up later, but I don’t need to be the one who drives the agenda, particularly when we are talking about how to get straight white men to quit controlling the agenda.

Back when he was one of the young voices, Billy Joel wrote

I guess that these are not the best of times
but they’re the only times I’ve ever known
and I believe there is a time for meditation
in cathedrals of our own

If those words ring true—and I believe they do—then they apply to the generations that have come after us who don’t necessarily know all the words to “Piano Man.”

I love the staying power of words and music. I am still moved by my Beatles records, even as I still love to read The Great Gatsby. And I love that Paul Simon and John Prine both had new albums last year and they are both in their seventies. I’m listening to a Karla Bonoff record as I write this. Then I catch myself still thinking of U2 as a new band because they came to light after I was out of seminary—and they’ve been making records for forty years. When familiar books and music feed enrich our connections to our memories and to one another, they are powerful. At the same time, the line between nostalgia and a sense of generational superiority is a thin one.

One of the choices I have made over the years is to read as much as I can of people who don’t write from an identified Christian perspective. John Berger is a good example. As far as labels go, he was a British art critic, labor activist, communist, and compassionate thinker. His writing has fed my life for many years. He asked questions in ways familiar voices did not, so I took it on myself to become friends with him through his writing. I wanted him to influence me. This year, I made a conscious decision to read theologians who are people of color for much the same reason. I want to hear from someone who asks different questions.

I am aging and I can keep growing.

I suppose that last sentence may sound antithetical to my opening premise that Joe and Bernie needs to get out of the way, but that’s not how I see it. Part of growing is letting go. One of the big lessons for me to learn is how not to be in charge. Instead of singing lead, it’s time to sing harmony, or maybe just to listen until I am invited to sing along.

In my work as an editor, most of the writers I work with are younger than I am. They have a lot to say. I am grateful that I get to learn from them and help them shape what they have to say. They see things in a way I had not—until I read their words, which is how I felt when I first read L’Engle and Buechner. There is more light yet to break forth and it will come from new light bearers.

“Sing to the Lord a new song,” sang the psalmist—ancient words that carry contemporary wisdom: let’s not quit looking for new songs to sing.

Peace,
Milton

PS—This song came to mind as a good way to close.