don't eat alone

lenten journal: spring training

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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March 5, 2018

spring training

south of here the boys of summer are planting
the seeds of spring, thawing out their throwing arms,
weeding out errors, practicing and pitching,
stealing a little extra daylight each evening
before the month is out they will teach us, again,
how to tell time, how to make a moment last forever,
how to fail gloriously in this story of hope and heartbreak
of what almost was and what still might be . . .
there is gospel in those grandstands and forgiveness
in those fields—ye who are weary come home

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: once again, with feeling

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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March 3, 2018

8

lenten journal: once again, with feeling

First Annual. There’s no such thing. You can have a “first” something—an inaugural event—but it isn’t “annual” until there is at least a second one. You may intend for it to happen every year from the very first time you do it, but it’s only annual when it has happened before.

On Friday, March 3, 1989, I had no idea I was beginning an annual tradition, or that I was even a part of an annual event. What I did know was I was dating an amazing woman and I wanted her to know how amazing I thought she was. So I showed up at her apartment with flowers, a CD, and a theology book, and a card that said, “I’ve never been able to give flowers, music, and a theology book to someone I dated before.” I don’t know how I remembered March 3 the next year, other than it is the day after my parents’ wedding anniversary, but I did remember and it became known as The Day of Gifts for No Reason.

A couple of months ago, Lila, our middle Schnauzer, got out of the yard. I was walking up and down the street calling her name when a woman shouted for the end of the block, “Are you looking for a little black dog?”

“Yes,” I said.

“She’s on the Green.” I ran up to the end of the block, because that’s where the Town Green begins, to see Lila walking the sidewalks in the exact same pattern we follow when we walk her in the evenings. She loves to walk more than anything. She didn’t run away, she just took the chance to do what mattered most. When I called her name, she came running to me, happy as she could be.

One this March 3, I followed the path I have come to know well. I brought Ginger peach roses and purple irises, Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution, a book of essays written by women incarcerated here in Connecticut and Magdelene: Poems by Marie Howe, and tonight we are going to see Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin in a rare acoustic show up in New London, which counts as the music part of the ritual this year.

In my book, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal, I said that ritual was “meaningful repetition.” We do things again and again because it matters that we do them because they remind us of bigger things. The Twenty-Ninth Annual Day of Gifts for No Reason is far more than than flowers and music and books. It has become, for me, an offering of gratitude. How amazing that I have gotten to do this for twenty-nine years.

Not long after we married, I wrote a song called “Well-Worn Love,” imagining a couple who had spent their lives together. I had no idea what I was talking about, other than imagining that love adds layers of meaning as it grows in years and as the rituals are repeated.

he pours her coffee like every morning
she kisses his nose as she passes
his hair is much thinner than back when they started
and she did not always wear glasses

she smiles with her eyes as he butters his bread
they talk about what’s in the news
he heads for the garden she gathers the laundry
and life feels familiar and true

and this is the story of two common hearts
who started out young and grew old
they have practiced a lifetime the waltz of a well-worn love

he takes her hand coming out of the movie
they stop at a sidewalk café
he finds her a chair that is next to the window
‘cause he knows she likes it that way

she smiles with her eyes at the things he remembers
she touches the side of his face
the moments they share in the balance of time
are the heart of redemption and grace

and this is the story of two common hearts
who started out young and grew old
they have practiced a lifetime the waltz of a well-worn love

she wears the ring that he put on her hand
some forty five years ago
and time is defined by the lines of the love they know

winter comes early with how shadows and snowfall
who knows how long it will stay
so he pours her coffee like every morning
‘cause he knows she likes it that way

and this is the story of two common hearts
who started out young and grew old
they have practiced a lifetime the waltz of a well-worn love

Twenty-Ninth Annual. Thank God.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: of birds and bluebonnets

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 28, 2018

8

lenten journal: of birds and bluebonnets

Late Monday afternoon, Ginger and I drove to New Haven so I could have an MRI. The asymmetrical nature and rapidity of my hearing loss over the last year caused my audiologist to send me to an ENT doctor, who decided to do the scan just to make sure we weren’t dealing with tumors or blockages. The folks at Yale Medical Center were helpful and encouraging. Ari, the person who operated the MRI machine was compassionate and aware that small spaces are not my favorite, to say the least. I laid down on the platform with my head in a sort of dish and then they put a mask over my face—that was the hardest part. Then she stepped away and the bed slid back into the tube and the noises began. Big noise. Like she had a jackhammer and I was lying underneath the pavement.

I decided I could think about being stuck in the tube or think of something else. The mask gave me a reason to imagine myself as a Storm Trooper, so, for the seventy minutes I was trapped in the noise and the nearness, I let myself get lost in space. When it was over, Ari said, “You should hear something in a day or two.” And I went on my way.

I called once yesterday and was told they didn’t have the results yet. They called today about one o’clock. “The test was normal,” she said. “The doctor says you can go on with your hearing aids.” I hung up the phone and realized I was more relieved than I had expected. Whatever is going on with my ears, it’s not something that will require brain surgery. I am grateful. And I am still left without any sense of why my hearing is deteriorating. I still have lots of questions and I don’t know who to ask.

I thought about Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount when he says,

Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these.

Since the demise of the Writer’s Almanac, I have taken it upon myself to post poetry on my Facebook page as close to daily as I can get. This morning, before the test results and my recollection of Matthew 6, I posted “This Day” by Jimmy Santiago Baca.

This Day

I feel foolish,
like those silly robins jumping on the ditch boughs
when I run by them.
Those robins do not have the grand style of the red tailed hawk,
no design, no dream, just robins acting stupid.
They’ve never smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey, consumed drugs
as I have.
In their mindless
fluttering about
filled with nonsense,
they tell me how they
love the Great Spirit,
scold me not to be self-pitying,
to open my life
and make this day a bough on a tree
leaning over infinity, where eternity flows forward
and with day the river runs
carrying all that falls in it.
Be happy Jimmy, they chirp,
Jimmy, be silly, make this day a tree
leaning over the river eternity
and fuss about in its branches.

As I thought about the lilies of the field, I realized I always imagine bluebonnets when I read that verse. If you have never seen a bluebonnet spring in Texas, you have missed one of life’s great beauties. The little wildflowers fill medians, drainage ditches, and pastures for a couple of weeks in March and then they’re gone. They don’t spend their two weeks of glory thinking about how they will die and go to seed. They just do their bluebonnet best and being traffic to a halt with their beauty. With Jimmy’s birds and my memories of bluebonnets, I went back to Jesus’ words and my questions.

Earlier this week, I made the comment to someone that in some ways I dreaded hearing that the MRI was clear because that meant we had no answers for why my hearing is changing. A friend at church, who is a scientist, gently reminded me that a clear MRI would be the best news—and he was right. Well, I guess I was right also because I have a clear MRI and I still have no idea why my hearing is changing. But my choice tonight is to be like the birds and the bluebonnets and relish in the good news. Jesus’ last words in this section of his sermon were

Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Maybe. And each day has enough joy and hope, whatever the news—so say the birds and the bluebonnets. And today I got good news.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: can I get a witness

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 27, 2018

12

As Ginger and I traveled home from my father’s funeral, we tried to imagine what life would be like for my mother who had lost her traveling companion of almost sixty years. They loved being together. It was their favorite thing. Then we tried to imagine what we would do without each other. It was more than I could imagine, but I said, “I think one of the hardest things would be not having someone who cared about the details of my day.”

So I made up my mind to do my best to call my mother everyday and ask about the details.

This morning, I was reading a post from my friend Kenny and he reminded me of a scene from the movie Shall We Dance. It was the story of John Clark (Richard Gere), an estate lawyer with a charming wife and loving family. Nevertheless, John felt something missing in his life. One evening on his commute home, John impulsively got off the train and signed up for weekly dance lessons. He didn’t tell his wife Beverly (Susan Sarandon) about his new interest in ballroom dancing, which raised her suspicions to the point that she hired a private investigator. At one meeting, they had a discussion about marriage.

“All these promises that we make and we break, why is it that you think people get married?” Beverly asks.

“Passion,” says Devine.

“No,” she says.

“It’s interesting, bccause I would have taken you for a romantic. Why, then?”

“Because we need a witness to our lives.” Beverly replies. “There are a billion people on this planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything: the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things—all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness.”

A witness. As someone who grew up Southern Baptist, the word witness had different connotations. Witnessing meant telling people about Jesus, rather than listening to them. Yet, it seems, when I look at the life of Jesus, he spent his time witnessing in the same way Beverly talked about: caring about everything happening in the lives of those around him. Honoring the details.

In the early days of the camcorder, before there were smartphones and Youtube, Peter Gabriel and Amnesty International started the Witness, working to help people tell their stories of struggle and oppression and asking those of us who live in privilege to promise their lives would not go unnoticed—to bear witness, the same way we bear a burden, I suppose. To learn, as U2 sang in a song I posted a couple of days ago, “to carry each other.”

One of the things that has crossed my path recently is a song from a Broadway show I have not seen called Dear Evan Hansen. I don’t know much more about it than the title and the song called “You Will Be Found.” The song makes me want to see the show. I found a video of a virtual choir singing the song that made it even more powerful. The opening verses say,

have you ever felt like nobody was there
have you felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere
have you ever felt like you could disappear
like you could fall and no one would hear

well, let that lonely feeling wash away
maybe there’s a reason to believe you’ll be okay
‘cause when you don’t feel strong enough to stand
you can reach, reach out your hand

and oh, someone will come running
and I know they’ll take you home
even when the dark comes crashing through
when you need a friend to carry you
and when you’re broken on the ground
you will be found

You will be found. Your life will not go unnoticed. I will notice it. Let us say those words to the people we love most. Then let us think of ways to say it to those we don’t know quite as well: to the people who pour our coffee, or take in our dry cleaning; to the checkers and servers and people we pass in grocery stores who look lost in the cereal aisle; to the people who sit nearby every Sunday in church, yet whose names we still do not know. Let us be witnesses to one another. Finders, and keepers.

What better way to spend our days than to honor the details of one another’s lives—witnesses to what matters most.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: an unreasonable request

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 25, 2018

2

I preached this morning at United Churches of Durham, Connecticut as a part of a pulpit exchange between our church and two others. My sermon is my offering for today.

“An Unreasonable Request”—Mark 8:31-38

At the risk of bringing up painful memories for some of you this morning, I invite you to step out of church for a minute and go back to English class. Can someone tell me what a metaphor is?

I’ll help you out: a metaphor is a comparison of two things that are not alike as a way to explain or give meaning to one of them. Examples work better than definitions.

America is a melting pot. (No one is actually melting.)
Life is a rollercoaster. (It has its ups and downs.)
Their home was a prison. (You get the picture.)
The world is a stage. (Not necessarily good news to introverts.)
My kid’s room is a disaster area. (This one might be literal in some cases.)

Metaphors work when people understand both sides of the comparison. If I were in a country that had no amusement parks, saying life is a rollercoaster might not get me too far. Jesus’ teachings are filled with metaphors and similes, and some of them are lost on us because we live in a different time and a different place. Jesus talked about people being sheep because the hills of Galilee were filled with them. When he called himself the Good Shepherd, most everyone in the crowd knew a shepherd personally. Most of us need the metaphor explained to get the full meaning and, in some ways, a metaphor is like a joke: if you have to explain it, it loses something.

That said, when we read the words of Jesus two thousand years after they were written down, what else can we do but try to explain them to one another? We not only have to try and look back to see his words in the context of his culture, but we must also do the work of seeing how the world we live in now affects how we read and hear the words. Two millennia later, and thousands of miles from Palestine, how do we hear these words?

All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them.

When we hear the word “cross”—at least in church—we are well-conditioned to think of Jesus’ crucifixion. Yet those who heard Jesus say these words knew nothing of his coming death. He tried to warn them that he was on a collision course with those in power, but they didn’t get it. For those gathered around Jesus, the cross was an instrument of execution—and a brutal one at that. Imagine Jesus saying, “You have to go to the electric chair,” or “You have to take a lethal injection.” So what did Jesus mean by the metaphor?

The conversation between Jesus and the disciples that we read this morning took place after they had seen him feed four thousand people when there appeared to be hardly any food at all. After lunch, Jesus warned them “to be on guard for the yeast of Herod and the Pharisees”—another metaphor they didn’t get. They thought he was literally talking about bread. Jesus became frustrated and peppered them with questions:

“Why are you talking about the fact that you don’t have any bread? Don’t you grasp what has happened? Don’t you understand? Are your hearts so resistant to what God is doing? Don’t you have eyes? Why can’t you see? Don’t you have ears? Why can’t you hear? Don’t you remember? When I broke five loaves of bread for those five thousand people, how many baskets full of leftovers did you gather?”

They answered, “Twelve.”

“And when I broke seven loaves of bread for those four thousand people, how many baskets full of leftovers did you gather?”

They answered, “Seven.”

Jesus said to them, “And you still don’t understand?”

Soon after, Jesus healed a blind man, but it happened in stages. Mark says Jesus rubbed spit on the man’s eyes and asked what he could see. “People are walking around like trees,” the man answered. So Jesus touched his eyes again and the man could see clearly. Yes, another metaphor—this time in the form of a miracle.

Then Jesus asked two more questions. First, he asked, “Who do people say I am?” The disciples mentioned Elijah and John the Baptist, among others. Then Jesus asked, “Who do you think I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”

Jesus then told them he was going to suffer at the hands of those in power and die. Mark says, “He was speaking clearly.” No metaphors. Peter, who had just made his triumphant claim about Jesus being the Messiah, would have none of it. He responded forcefully, even violently. The gospel says Peter “took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him.”

Jesus responded in what is most often translated as, “Get behind me, Satan,” but he wasn’t calling Peter the devil. The Greek word was used to describe a legal adversary, or prosecutor—someone who spelled out the letter of the law. That’s right: another metaphor. Jesus was saying, “Don’t fight me on this. Don’t reason with me. Listen.” Peter was trying to protect Jesus—and himself—and Jesus responded by saying, take up your cross and follow me. Lose your life to find it.

Jesus spoke those words in his context and we hear them in ours. How then do we hear Jesus’ call to lose our lives in the wake of the latest school shooting? What do we see in Jesus’ words that the last shall be first in a culture that has little use for anyone but winners? What does it mean to take up our cross in our time and our culture?

This past week I was part of an exchange on a Facebook thread with someone I don’t know—a friend of a friend. I was writing about banning assault weapons and he was arguing that people had a right to guns. After we went back and forth a couple of times, he said, “Please argue from reason and not emotion.” It strikes me that he was saying the same thing Peter was saying to Jesus. Let me be clear: I’m not saying I’m Jesus in this scenario. I am saying that Jesus’ call to take up our cross is not a reasonable request. It is a call of passion, compassion, and emotion. It is a call to choose love over fear is neither logical nor dispassionate. Choosing love is not a reasonable act, and it is also more than an emotional response. Love is an act of will, an intentional decision to defy all that pulls us apart. Whatever the conversation is, if we lead with, “I have a right to . . . ,” we miss the call of Christ on our lives.

Well, let me make an exception to that statement. If you are in an abusive situation, it is not God’s will for you to stay there and “lose your life.” Abuse, in any form, is not a cross to bear. That is not what I am talking about here.

If we begin talking about gun violence by saying, “I have a right to bear arms,” or we begin talking about the need for affordable housing in our communities by saying, “That will affect my property value if they build next to me,” or we begin the immigration discussion by saying, “I was here first,” or we begin the discussion about economic justice with, “Well, I worked hard for what I have,” then we are missing the meaning of Jesus’ metaphor.

Lose your life to find it, Jesus said. He wasn’t being literal there either. We cling to what is ours when we think we are not safe, or when we think we will not have enough. To lose our lives—to choose to respond to the brokenness of the world out of love rather than fear—means to trust that God’s love is stronger than fear.

When students around the country began planning protests and walkouts to break the stalemate in our discussion about gun violence, a number of school districts banned the protests and said any students that participated would face detention or suspension. Getting zeros for four or five days of classwork might change someone’s GPA or affect a semester grade. It could, I suppose, affect college admissions for some. School officials thought they could scare the students into compliance. The students are still walking out. They are living metaphors, losing something to find something far more valuable. And they are offering us a chance to see with new eyes.

To take up our cross means to embrace the unreasonable truth that the primary point of faith and of life is not to make sure we are safe and taken care of before we act on someone else’s behalf. The metaphor is clear: to live a life of faith in Christ will cost us our lives as we offer them to one another, but, like the handful of loaves that fed thousands, our willingness to share more than our leftovers creates abundance. Our willingness to voluntarily share each other’s pain brings peace that cannot be explained. When we lose our lives in one another, we find life more abundantly. Don’t be reasonable. Choose love. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: an ear to the ground

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 23, 2018

9

Last night I went to an ecclesiastical council, which sounds as though I should have been in a fancy robe with a funny hat, but in the United Church of Christ it simply means a gathering of people from the churches in our association to approve someone for ordination pending a call. The candidate told his story, and then people asked questions. One person asked him to talk about the importance of prayer in his life.

That has not been an easy question for me. I am not saying I don’t think prayer is important. I am saying I have wrestled with how it works. I don’t think God waits until there is a critical mass of people asking for a particular thing before someone is healed or some situation resolved. Yet, I pray for healing sometimes. I have struggled with why it matters to pray for Sudan or Somalia or Palestine when I have no apparent contact with anyone in those places. And still I pray.

A couple of months back, I had dinner with one of the authors I worked with and he talked about how he was learning about the ways that trees talk to each other. (Here’s a TED talk about it, if you are interested.) The short version is trees communicate and even share resources through a mycorrhizal network of fungi that can run for miles underground. Our world is full of connections we can’t see. The author went on to say, “It has given me a new way to think about prayer—we are sharing resources through an invisible network.”

His comment helped me. The next morning, I serendipitously came across this poem by Catherine Barnett.

Epistemology

Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.
Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.
Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord
to keep it from fraying?
Not the man who called my life a debacle,
a word whose sound I love.
In a debacle things are unleashed.
Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.
I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,
the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.
They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.
They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree.
And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing
stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect
or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,
to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.
Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

I started wearing hearing aids about six years ago. I can remember putting them in and then zipping up my jacket to leave the audiologist’s office. “Did you know that makes noise?” I asked her. In the last year, I have noticed a big change in my hearing, so my audiologist here in Connecticut did the tests again, even though I had them done just a year ago. I have known all along that I cannot hear the higher end of the spectrum without help, but what changed is what they call “clarity of speech.” In one year, my right ear decreased by 20% and my left ear by 40%. The audiologist sent me to see an ENT doctor because the results were unusual. The doctor scheduled me for an MRI to see what they can figure out. He was not alarmist, but said the physical reasons that could cause what is happening could be some sort of blockage, a tumor, or an infection, among other things.

Which brings me to the reason I started off talking about trees. I need to lean into the invisible network that connects us and ask you to pray. Pray that I might feel at ease during the MRI, since confined spaces are not my favorite. Pray that the MRI offers some useful information. Part of me feels like the most difficult answer after the test might be, “We didn’t really find anything conclusive.” Pray that both my frustration at not hearing well and my despair at losing my hearing don’t get the last word, or even the prevailing word. Pray however you want—just send nutrients. I’ll have my ears to the ground.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: stop, hey, what’s that sound?

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 22, 2018

2

lenten journal: stop, hey, what’s that sound?

Watching the footage of student protests in response to the deaths in Florida set me to thinking about protest songs and the underlying protest that fuels our Lenten journey. Jesus went to the cross because he spoke truth to power—because he protested against oppression and the marginalization of people. When we stand up and stand together, we are walking in the footsteps of the one who calls us in love to live out that love every chance we get. I offer, then, a soundtrack that is by no means exhaustive, but is full of hope and heart.

Last Sunday, we worshipped at the First African Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. It was Children’s Sunday, and the youth choir sang “Glory” from the Selma soundtrack. I will let that be our opening hymn.

The next song came to mind as I read about schools that are preemptively forbidding their students to protest. The first words that came to mind were, “Stop—hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

Tracy Chapman reminds us perhaps we are talking about more than protest . . .

Paul Simon wrote “American Tune” in 1974, including these prophetic words:
but it’s all right, it’s all right
we’ve lived so well so long
still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

Old Crow Medicine Show covered a David Rawlings tune that is one of my favorites.

And for our benediction, U2 and Mary J. Blige: we’ve got to carry each other . . .

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: the busses will wait

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 21, 2018

5

I missed writing last night because we were traveling back from Richmond. I am still figuring out what to say about what I saw in heard in our days there. I keep coming back to the image of layers that I used in a different context a week ago as I began this year’s version of my Lenten journal. As we traveled, we got word of Billy Graham’s death. As I said on Facebook, I met Billy Graham when he came to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, where we lived, in 1960. That visit started a friendship with my parents that lasted the rest of their lives. The better story has to do with my mother. She was a student at Baylor when Billy Graham came to speak at a campus revival, somewhere in 1948 or 1949. He was still new to the scene, as it were.

My mother was walking across campus when a car pulled up with four young men inside and asked directions to one of the buildings on campus. She answered their question and then invited them to the revival. When they sort of snickered, she asked if they knew Jesus as their savior. Again, they kind of laughed, and so she shared her faith with them—a hallmark of my mother’s life at any age.

That night, when she got to the service and the introduced Graham to the crowd, she realized who she had witnessed to. And then Billy told the story to those who were gathered. The guy sitting next to my mother said, “What kind of crazy person would witness to Billy Graham?”

“I know,” my mother said.

Before we left Richmond yesterday we visited the Maggie Walker house. I did not know anything about her before I got to Richmond. Now I wonder why she is not a nationally known figure. She became the first African American woman to own a bank in the 1920s—in Richmond. She also owned a department store and a newspaper. She was an early leader in the NAACP. She suffered great personal pain even as she became a commercial, political, and even spiritual force in Richmond. “Have faith, have courage, have hope, and carry on,” she said.

Walker’s faith was more grounded in helping people find jobs and homes and education than telling them the buses would wait, yet both she and Graham were living out the call they heard from God. I find more resonance with her expression of faith than I do with Graham’s altar calls, but as I have read those who have been quick to offer a critique of what he did, I find myself reticent to pile on—and not just because his death is so recent.

I came to the place long ago where I ceased to believe that Hell was a place. I think Love is the last word, not just for this life but for eternity. However things go in the dimension that lies beyond this life, I think God is calling, “Olly olly oxen free.” That goes for Billy Graham. He doesn’t have to agree with me for God to love him.

I will let the Lost Dogs sing our benediction: breathe deep the breath of God.

The busses will wait.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: no joke

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 19, 2018

3

Our trip to Richmond has given me more than I can begin to unpack right now. Those stories will come in the days ahead. Tonight, I offer another poem.

no joke

I once heard a comedian say
the only way to get to the good jokes
was to push past the easy ones: say all
the double entendres, the terrible
puns, and the sex—and then you find
punch lines more profound than predictable.

Perhaps I’m stretching the analogy, but
couldn’t we say that when we set aside
the alleluias for Lent we acknowledge
that praise can sometimes turn to platitude:
get up and do it again. Amen. Say it again . . .

Listen to the birds who are not singing.
Wait for the trains that are not coming.
Dance to music that no one is playing.
Set places for those who have yet to show up.
Rolling the same stones is no preparation
for the belly laugh of the resurrection.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: listen, white people

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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February 18, 2018

6

We worshipped today at First African Baptist Church in Richmond. It was a rich and meaningful service and the people there greeted us with extravagant hospitality. I have stories to tell about our day, but tonight, I am still dealing with feelings brought up by what I have seen while we have been here. Here’s a poem that tries to say some of what is going on inside me.

listen, white people

yeah, I’m talking to me
and to you, too
talking to anyone

who never had to worry
about being followed
stopped or accused

because of the
color of our skin

who never thought
twice about a hoodie
making us a threat

listen right now
we need to listen
do you hear me?

don’t speak of
what the boy might
have done wrong

don’t explain
make excuses or
offer solutions

just listen
listen, listen, listen
for a long time

then, when you speak
speak as an ally
not an expert

Peace,
Milton

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