don't eat alone

As the second week of Advent begins, the light moves from hope to peace. The practice of Advent grows out of church tradition rather than anything Jesus said or did, or anything in the Bible. I don’t know the story of how the weeks became identified—hope, peace, joy, and love—or how the order was chosen, though I can see a logic in the progression. The idea behind the season is to get ready, to prepare, as Meister Eckhardt said, Christ to be born in our time and in our culture. Right now, the days in which we live don’t have much to offer when it comes to peace.

Hope may seem like an uphill climb, but even uncertain times offer the possibility of a new thing. Joy is the deep-seated surprise of the Spirit and can show up anytime. Love, as Paul wrote, endures all things. Peace, it seems, is the most fragile of our Advent gifts. This year, it feels as broken as the coffee mug I ordered for Ginger that arrived poorly-packed and in pieces. Our teenagers have never known a day in their lives when we were not at war. We have come to expect mass shootings as a normal part of American life. Our elected officials make decisions based on how to stay in power and how to do damage to the opposition rather than working to promote the common good.

We cry, “Peace, peace,” but there is no peace—or so it seems.

As your children’s choir sang this morning and then lit the Peace Candle, I wondered where we would find it. My last year in seminary, I had visions of doctoral work, so I took a French class to meet one of the prerequisite requirements. I never finished the degree, but I do remember something from the class. We had to translate the Beatitudes, and the French translation of Matthew 5:9 read:

Heureux ceux qui répandent autour d’eux la paix,

which translated into English as,

Blessed are those who spread peace around them.

My heart breaks for Palestine and Israel, for Zimbabwe, for Turkey, to name just a few places where there is little peace and I feel like I have little or no way of helping the situation. The peace I can spread doesn’t reach that far. But I sat in church for ten minutes this morning listening to people voice prayer requests for friends and family who were hurting, and I know other stories of lives I can touch who don’t feel very peaceful these days. The candle the kids lit this morning is not a particularly bright light, in terms of brightening the room, but it is a start. That I am a candle and not a spotlight does not mean this little light of mine doesn’t matter. Blessed are those who spread peace around them. That’s the place to start.

Sam Baker is a singer-songwriter I had the pleasure of meeting several years ago. In 1986 he was riding a train in Peru when it was bombed and he suffered a brain injury. He had to relearn both how to play guitar and how to use words. The next record he released was in 2004. As we begin our week of peace, I will let his song, “Go In Peace,” be our benediction. It is a song that sustains me.

go in peace, go in kindness
go in faith, go in love
leave the day, the day behind us
day is done, go in grace

let us go into the dark
not afraid, not alone
let us hope by some good pleasure
safely to arrive at home

Peace,
Milton

As this first week of Advent draws to a close and we prepare to move form hope to peace, I offer these words from The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger:

Hope, however, is an act of faith and has to be sustained by concrete actions. For example, the action of approach, of measuring distances and walking towards. This will lead to collaborations which deny discontinuity. (214)

I spent the day cooking with friends from church so we could serve dinner to more friends from church. Even though we had our first snowfall of the season, we filled up the tables and filled up ourselves with food and fellowship. We collaborated to deny discontinuity. I didn’t realize that is what we did until I read Berger’s words tonight. Half of those who helped us cook this afternoon did so knowing they were not going to be able to be at the dinner. I asked for help and they responded—a concrete action, as Berger says, of measuring distances and walking towards.

I would translate the phrase measuring distances to mean figuring out what it takes to get from me to you, and then figuring out how to get there. Lila, one of our miniature Schnauzers whom we rescued, has this adorable way of jumping to you from wherever she is. She doesn’t measure a thing. She just jumps—and, sometimes, she misses. The distance was greater than she imagined, but she is undaunted. She howls, flaps her ears, and jumps again with a better sense of just how far she has to go. Canine hope personified. She is always coming towards.

Tomorrow, as in many UCC churches, we will begin our service by saying, “Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” Wherever we are, may we all be walking towards . . .

Peace,
Milton

This week I have been posting poems on my Facebook page. I started because a friend half-jokingly asked me to pick up where the Writer’s Almanac had left off, since it stopped when Garrison Keillor was fired after allegations of sexual harassment. That was a tough one for me. I started listening to A Prairie Home Companion when I was in seminary. I have said more than once that I learned more about preaching from listening to the news from Lake Wobegon than I did from studying homiletics. I loved listening to him tell stories. I read what Al Franken had to say as he announced his resignation. I have a feeling their are more names yet to break forth.

It is not surprising, I suppose, that the issue feels more poignant when our heroes fall, and then I feel foolish being surprised. Many, many years ago Ginger and I both stopped asking, “Who gives this bride to be married?” when we officiated at weddings because the language is a hold over from when weddings were an exchange of property between the father and the groom—and the bride was the property. Though we say we have moved beyond that, that question still gets asked at a lot of altars. We are almost a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century and women still fight for equal pay because the men in charge—including many elected officials—think men are more valuable. Across a large part of Christendom, women are not seen as being capable of ordination or, in some cases, even leadership for no other reason than they don’t have the right genetalia. I grew up being told that “man” stood for everyone and that “he” was a universal pronoun for humans and the proper pronoun for God. All of these things have contributed to a world where men think just because they want something they can have it. How we choose our words matters.

There is more that has to change than our sexual harassment policies. Women are not here to be at the mercy of, or for the pleasure of men. It feels kind of crazy to me to even have to write that sentence as though it were something other than obvious. It is obvious. We have let our traditions and our vocabulary blind us to the ways our culture has subjugated women across the board. It is changing now because women are changing it. They are the ones who brought all of this into a new light. Without any guarantee of safety or success. That is where the hope is, for me. And the poetry. Pay attention, men. God is still speaking.

Peace,
Milton

I spent some time looking for songs about hope in my music library tonight, in search of something beyond the songs I go to first. Here’s what I found.

The first is from the Milk Carton Kids, who are sort of Simon and Garfunkel for a new century. Their song is called “Hope of a Lifetime.”

while I pray for Promised Land
to replace all I have made
darkness steals the light I bear
and the hope of a lifetime fades
the hope of a lifetime fades

in the newfound reverie
of quiet peace I found
freedom comes from being unafraid
of the heartache that can plague a man
the heartache that can plague a man

a Spartan smile and westward stare hold a promise in the air
that’s the way they used to find their own way home
by the stars, on their own
by the stars, on their own

I first learned of Glen Hansard when he was a part of the Swell Season. His solo work is equally as compelling. Here is “Song of Good Hope.”

and take your time babe
it’s not as bad as it seems, you’ll be fine babe
it’s just some rivers and streams in between
you and where you wanna be
and watch the signs now
you’ll know what they mean, you’ll be fine now
just stay close to me and make good hope
walk with you through everything

may the song of good hope
walk with you through everything

Marc Broussard is a soulful singer who knows how to sing a love song. Here is “Hope for Me Yet.”

I could write a million verses
every word you’ve heard before
steal some of Dylan’s best
but it’d leave me wanting to say more
‘cause theres so much more

baby if you could love someone like me
theres no end to the possibility
hopes and dreams push away the pain and regret
but loving you just lets me know
there might be hope for me yet

Kate Rusby is an English folksinger I have listened to for a long time. She sings “Only Hope.”

there is peace for the restless one
there is peace for the restless one
she was on the verge of thinking
that her soul was lost and sinking
there is peace for the restless one

and you, you where my only hope
but could you really care for me
l even asked the holy ghost
are you the one I love the most
are you the one to set me free?

I’ll close tonight with a song from Glen Campbell’s album, Ghost on the Canvas, which he wrote and recorded as Alzheimer’s Disease was really starting to take its toll. Here is “Hold on Hope.”

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campfire flickering on the landscape
that nothing grows on, time still goes on
through each life of misery

everybody’s gotta hold on hope
it’s the last thing that’s holding me

Hope is holding us all.

Peace,
Milton

Two or three times on Facebook today I saw a picture posted of an engraved quote at the FDR Memorial in Washington DC. It reads,

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

What is most astounding to me, I suppose, is that those words create disagreement. It seems to me that our most natural response should be to take care of one another, rather than judge or accuse or assume the propensity for possessions is some sort of indication of talent or divine favor. An honest look at the news will tell you that rich and smart are not the same thing. Neither are rich and blessed. Rich and privileged—now you’re on to something. But I digress.

I have been looking for hopeful words to offer this week, and that quote is a hopeful word because it calls us beyond ourselves. It calls us to remember life is a team sport and not a winner-take-all affair. The hope of humanity lies in our capacity to care for one another. In the crush of people trying to get through the doors at Grand Central this afternoon, I saw a woman walking slowly with a walker in front of me. A young man got to the door ahead of her and didn’t see her at first. Just as I was about to try and speed up to open the door, I could see her presence register in his peripheral vision and, even though he had already gone through the door, he turned back and held it open for her and smiled. It was a small motion for everyone except the woman.

Hope is not believing that everything will get better as much as it is trusting that we are here for each other. Hope is living as though it matters that we notice the details. Hope is holding open the door, even when you’re in a hurry. Our actions may not be carved in stone, but they will be remembered.

Peace,
Milton

For a long time now, the comma has been an important symbol for the United Church of Christ. You have to love a denomination that finds metaphor in punctuation. The idea started with the “God Is Still Speaking” campaign that played off of a Gracie Allen quote—“Never put a period where God has placed a comma”—and a leaning back into the words of one of our Pilgrim ancestors, John Robinson, who said, “There was more light yet to break forth. We in the UCC, therefore, love our commas. Life, after all, is one big run-on sentence.

In looking for words of hope today, I went back through my notes on John Berger’s novel, A to X: A Story in Letters, which is made up of letters from A’ida to her husband, Xavier, who is a political prisoner. The whole story is told from her letters; we never hear from him. In one of the missives later in the book, she tells him,

When I buy baklava, which is not often because I eat too many, I leave a few for her on her windowsill, with a head scarf over them so the wasps don’t come. For these little gifts we don’t thank each other with words. They are commas of care. . . . Commas of care! Punctuating our days with them is something long-term prisoners learn, isn’t it? (176-7)

Commas of care. I love the phrase.

One of the ways the comma is defined is as “a soft pause” in a sentence. It is not a full stop, but a rest or a small break. In one grammatical guide, I found this advice: “The presence or absence of a comma can change the meaning of a sentence—sometimes dramatically.” Perhaps even more so with commas of care. If life is one big run-on sentence, the soft pauses that offer us the chance to show kindness and compassion become even more crucial. In the endless stream of raging rhetoric, the moments that offer us separation and space are life-giving. We are called to punctuate our days with care, to offer glimpses of our shared humanity, to remind one another of our unbreakable belonging, to offer hope in the face of it all,

Peace,
Milton

One of the records that has been in heavy rotation at our house is Fifteen by The Wailin’ Jennys. (There are so many anachronisms in that sentence.) It is a record of cover songs, and specifically songs about grief and sorrow. They have the awesome audacity to sing Emmylou Harris’ “Boulder to Birmingham,” Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart,” and Patty Griffin’s “Not Alone,” along with Tom Petty, Paul Simon, and Dolly Parton covers. Dolly’s song, “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” was what set me to writing tonight, as I went looking for words of hope I promised. And it is worth sharing here.

it’s been a long dark night
and I’ve been a waitin’ for the morning
it’s been a long hard fight
but I see a brand new day a dawning
I’ve been looking for the sunshine
’cause I ain’t seen it in so long
but everything’s gonna work out just fine
everything’s gonna be all right
that’s been all wrong

’cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning
I can see the light of a brand new day
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
and everything’s gonna be all right
it’s gonna be okay

As much as I love the song, I want to offer something more tonight than everything is going to be okay, so I’m going to turn to the song that introduced me to the Wailin’ Jennys: “One Voice.”

this is the sound of one voice
one spirit, one voice
the sound of one who makes a choice
this is the sound of one voice

this is the sound of voices two
the sound of me singing with you
helping each other to make it through
this is the sound of voices two

this is the sound of voices three
singing together in harmony
surrendering to the mystery
this is the sound of voices three

this is the sound of all of us
singing with love and the will to trust
leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
this is the sound of all of us

this is the sound of one voice
one people, one voice
a song for every one of us
this is the sound of one voice
this is the sound of one voice

A song for every one of us. Our one voice is not a solo, but a glorious choir singing back to the night. Let the melody carry you. Sing along.

Peace,
Milton

As Advent begins, I wonder how Christ can be born again in our time and in our culture. Yet Luke starts his story by noting that Quirinius was governor of Syria, and he made Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem because Augustus declared a change in the tax plan. They were surrounded by wars and rumors of wars, by a government that had no regard for anyone but the rich and powerful. They were not married, but they were about to be parents. In the midst of all that was wrong with the world, they were called to hope.

Rebecca Solnit says, To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk. (Hope in the Dark 4)

For years, I have written on this blog trusting that I had a helpful, and perhaps hopeful, word to say. I have not written here in weeks because I have allowed myself to be beaten down the despair disguised as bravado and the cynicism that masquerades as certainty. The vicious volume on most any media, coupled with another difficult round with my depression have kept me quiet. In the silence, I have worked hard to listen better and I have learned that I don’t have to weigh in on everything. I probably could stand to find a balance, though, because I want to be better at hoping, at living with an open heart and uncertainty.

Hoping is not wishing. Hoping is not believing. Hope put Mary and Joseph on the road, set the shepherds running into town, and made John the Baptist call out the proud and powerful. I hear hope these days in the voices of William Barber, Colin Kaepernick, Anne Lamott, John Pavlovitz, Timothy Tyson, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Naomi Shihab Nye—people who keep calling us to an open heart and uncertainty. My list is not exhaustive. Neither is it political. I do not hear hope from our elected officials. I hear gloom and safety.

This morning, we lit the candle of hope. This week, I will meet you here each day to offer all the hope I can find. It’s dark, I know. But did you see that moon?

Peace,
Milton