don't eat alone

food for thought

the bible says
we are made of dust . . .
our bones, perhaps,
but our spirits are
made of the savor
of sautéed garlic,
the hope of rising
dough, the laughter
of bacon frying,the
simmer of friendship—
every morsel of our
mortality a reminder
to remember that we
came from love
and to love
we shall return

Peace,
Milton

On the cusp of the passing of an unfair and unjust tax bill, and a couple of days after the fifth anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school, and on the morning that a suicide bomber killed twelve other people at a church in Pakistan, and in the light of what feels like an endless string of suffering, how do we find the flame to light the candle of joy?

Ginger did it this morning by talking about Mary. Every time I hear the story, I am struck by the grit of the young woman as she encounters the angel and stares down both his presence and his proclamation, even as she tries to comes to grips with being “a most favored one.” She listens hard, asks good questions, and then says, “Let it be just as you say.”

Despite the fact that the dictionary treats joy as a synonym for happiness, Mary’s response demonstrates something more profound and and more informed that feeling happy. Joy has resolve and tenacity. Joy is courageous in the way Ginger defined it in her sermon: “Courage is believing something else is more important than fear.” Yes. Most every time an angel shows up in scripture, they lead with, “Do not be afraid.” I used to think they were simply trying to help whomever they were talking to deal with the fact that there was an angel in the room, but perhaps it was a larger challenge: don’t be afraid; be joyful. Learn what is more important than fear.

Ginger summed up Gabriel’s message to Mary in three phrases: God is proud of you; God believes in you, and you have God’s blessing. Then she asked what it would be like if we could all hear that message and take it to heart—and she had us practice. We turned to each other and said, “I’m proud of you, I believe in you, and you have my blessing.” For someone who inherited a legacy of feeling unworthy of love and who has worked hard to hear other voices, her words hit home for me. I found joy in both hearing the words and saying them to those around me. Joy is grounded in our belonging to God and to one another. Joy takes root and grows when we stand together.

Pierce Pettis has a song I have carried in my heart for many years called “God Believes In You.” The bridge says,

oh, everything matters if anything matters at all
everything matters no matter how big, no matter how small
oh, God believes in you, yes, God believes in you

And God is proud of you. You have God’s blessing. Let it be just as I said.

Peace,
Milton

PS—Here’s the song:

As I read news reports of the election results in Alabama and the dumpster fire that passes for the United States Senate, it struck me that people in power are not interested in peace. They thrive on agitation, on disruption. We have become accustomed to the word grenades that get tweeted in the middle of the night, and the legislative gymnastics of the congressional leadership (though I use that word cautiously)—both are designed to hold on to power, not to lead us to peace. They don’t know much about peace because they operate out of fear, and they foment it as well.

The brave people are the people of color who elected Doug Jones in Alabama, where the fear-gripped legislature passed restrictive voter ID laws and then closed driver’s license bureaus in predominantly African American counties. And the voters still turned out. The victory does not belong to the machinations of power, but to the peaceful determination of those who are mostly disregarded by the very system they used to bring change.

In Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice, bell hooks says, “Communities of care are sustained by rituals of regard.” (141) Over the years, I have come to see the difference between a ritual and a habit. A habit is something you do because you just got used to doing it that way. Some habits are helpful: I have a routine I follow every morning because I am not awake enough to think about anything. Some habits are not, and our repetition keeps us from seeing wider possibilities. Ritual, on the other hand, is meaningful repetition. We do what we do over and over again because it grounds us in the stories that matter most. When I hear rituals of regard, I see repeated gestures of kindness, regular gatherings together around dinner tables, and repeatedly looking for ways to tighten the bonds between us.

While the dumpster fire blazed, people drove others to the polls, people voted, people encouraged and took care of one another—showed regard for one another—and it made a difference. Our nation is in crisis. The people in power are fine with that. It means they will stay in power, and they will make money. Their is nothing in their repertoire that calls them to rituals of regard. “Blessed are the peace makers,” Jesus said. Blessed are those who spread peace repeatedly and on purpose.

I want to be one of them.

Peace,
Milton

I offer a poem of my own this evening.

gift swap

the Christmas party tradition
for the confirmation classes
is to sit in a circle and take turns
choosing a gift, or taking one
someone else has already opened
and replacing it with another mystery.

the giant jar of M&Ms changed hands
four or five times, as did the fluffy
socks; someone even wanted my thermos.
I came home with a cup of kisses
and a heart full of laughter—
there was enough to go around.

the truth is I need what you have
and I am counting on you to share
I’ll do the same—let’s unwrap our hearts
like we’re kids on Christmas morning . . .
it’s just what I always wanted
just what I always wanted.

Peace,
Milton

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