don't eat alone

I didn’t write yesterday because I didn’t sleep well the night before. On purpose.

As one who lives with sleep apnea, from time to time I have to take a sleep test, which means trying to sleep without my CPAP, affectionately known at our house as my Snuffleupagus Machine because it requires of me to wear a mask over my nose with a hose that attaches to a machine that blows a steady stream of air into my lungs.

Sleep apnea means I quit breathing over and over again durning the night. For any number of reasons, my airway shuts. The first time I went to “sleep camp,” as we called it, the technician told me I was sleeping in ninety-second increments. All my life I had thought I didn’t need much sleep, since resting for four hours didn’t feel much different than eight, when, in fact, I had never known what if felt like to feel rested. So, for the last fifteen years, I have been religious about putting on my Snuffy mask at bedtime.

The technology has advanced since my last test, because I didn’t have to go to camp; I did the test at home, wearing a monitor that recorded my sleep patterns. When I woke up, I took it back to them and they will set me up with a new machine that matches my needs in a couple of weeks. I was happy to put on the old one again last night.

Tonight we are having a Christmas Open House in our barn, between the two services. We have strung lights and turned on space heaters, and I have been baking cookies and other goodies to share with our church family. Since I am also marking the anniversary of my mother going into hospice at Christmas, I decided I would use her recipes for the open house. I have her recipe box—proof that I didn’t inherit her organizational skills. I chose a couple I remember her making and some that were new to me. I made some adaptations with a couple of the cookie recipes, based on ingredients I had on hand. Preparing for tonight has been meaningful, and emotional at times. Feeling connected to her today has not made her absence disappear, but, like my Snuffy machine, it has helped me to breathe, if you will, and lean into the memories. Into the everlasting arms.

When my father died, a friend who was more acquainted with grief said, “Don’t think about having to live forever without him. Chop up life into digestible chunks. Get through the next hour, and then get through the hour after that. Sometimes, you may be taking it fifteen minutes at a time.” The air from my CPAP lets me rest by catching my breath every ninety seconds and giving it back to me, over and over again, so that I can connect them into a restful night. I spent the day making cookies, one at a time, connecting a lifetime of memories with my mother.

Mary didn’t know that her baby boy would learn to walk on water. All she knew was she had walked step by step to Bethlehem, and now she and Joseph would take it day by day as their boy grew in wisdom and stature, as we used to say in Sunday School. She figured out how to live with her prayer, “Let it be as you said,” on a daily basis. When life seemed to shut down, I suppose, she leaned into the Spirit of God to breathe into her once more, that she might find life and find rest.

Maybe that’s stretching the metaphor, and, as I said a few posts ago, I continue to learn how to breathe in the breath of God and breathe out the love of God. One breath at a time. We will gather in our barn tonight, around my mother’s cookies, and then gather around the manger at church to be filled, I hope, with the breath of heaven once again.

Thanks for making the journey this Advent. I am richer for the companionship.

Christ is born. Alleluia. Merry Christmas.

Peace,
Milton

As I rode the train into New York, hoping for sunrise this morning, I came across an article shared by a couple of friends stating that tonight would be “the darkest night in 500 years” because the solstice was paired with a lunar eclipse. Now there’s a metaphor, I thought, because that is how this year has felt.

For the past three or four years, as we head into a new year, it has been my practice to post Counting Crows’ lines,

long December and there’s reason to be believe
maybe this year will be better than the last.

2016 makes me want to sing it louder than ever; it was not just December that has felt long and dark. For many reasons, this year has been the winter solstice of years, the longest of most all of them. Then somewhere in my ramblings during the day, I found out (thanks to snopes.com) that the article about the darkest night was written in 2010 and was in error. It is the solstice, but the next eclipse doesn’t happen until February. It’s still going to be the longest night of a long, dark year, but not the darkest one in half a millennium. Maybe there is a metaphor there as well: things are bad, but . . .

When the people of the village are being expelled in Fiddler on the Roof, one of them asks the rabbi, “Wouldn’t this be a good time for the messiah to come?” Is there ever a time when “Yes” is not a good answer to that question? In my Advent re-readings, I came across a poem by Madeleine L’Engle, “The Risk of Birth,” written in the early 70s.

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn–
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn–
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

And then, I stumbled on to Parker Palmer’s words about this Christmas (forgive the long quote):

For a lot of folks I know who celebrate Christmas — not the store-bought version, but the holy day itself — this year is proving to be a challenge. How do we celebrate the Good News at a time when the news is so relentlessly bad, celebrate the light at a time of deepening darkness?

A friend of mine thinks he’s found the upside. He says that Christmas, 2016 can give us a taste of what the first Christmas was like, when King Herod the Great [sic] hovered in the background, commanding what legend calls “The Massacre of the Innocents.” That may not qualify as encouragement to you, but it’s a bracing point.

The discouraged people I’m talking about, including me, aren’t Christian naïfs shocked by the fact that bad news keeps dragging us down at “this festive time of year.” They are folks who’ve long been involved in trying to shed light in the darkness — people working for racial justice and against all forms of violence, for the wellbeing of children and against the ruination of the earth, for civil dialogue and against xenophobia. This ain’t their first rodeo. And it ain’t the first time they’ve seen the darkness they’re resisting emanate directly from Washington, D.C.

But in a way I haven’t felt since the late 1960s and Vietnam, they and I are feeling like strangers in a strange land. Their question, my question, is simple: how do we celebrate Christmas at a time when it’s hard to believe that its core message of love and peace is anything more than pious prattling that will not reach or touch the Powers that Be — and may in fact provide cover for their growing compendium of crimes against decency, sanity, and humanity?

His question is haunting and on target, yet it also reminds me that the first birth of Christ in our world was not aimed at the Powers That Be. The Creator of the Universe put skin on just like everyone: starting in the womb, enduring the crisis of birth, and entering the world as a baby dependent on others for life itself. The news went out to shepherds, not senators. The “kings” who arrived later on were not recognized or particularly welcome. Jesus was as grassroots as they come. Love and peace, at their core, aren’t legislated. They are born, and this year, they beg to be born again in us. If we are willing to sing “Let it be” along with Mary, we can incarnate the love and grace and peace of God into the darkness that surrounds us, we can sing to shepherds and foreigners, we can give birth to the inextinguishable light of hope in our world.

Palmer mentions one of my favorite carols, Phiilips’ Brooks’ “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” pointing to the last two lines of the first verse:

the hopes and fears of all the years
are met in thee tonight

Maybe that’s what every angel that shows up in scripture meant when they said, “Fear not!” It wasn’t about being scared of the angel in the room. It was a call to faith, to love, to incarnation: don’t be afraid to live out the love of God, regardless of the circumstances.

As I stood on the train platform this morning, I remembered that tomorrow there will be incrementally more light than today. The night is far gone. The day is at hand. Do not be afraid. We have work to do. Together.

Peace,
Milton

A comment from my friend Jeff on last night’s post sent me on a bit of a musical journey today, so I thought I would invite you to make it with me as we head to the manger. After reading about our new house in Durham, he quoted the chorus of a Kenny Loggins record I remember buying in college, and listening to over and over.

please, celebrate me home
give me a number
please, celebrate me home
play me one more song
that I’ll always remember
and I can recall
whenever I find myself too all alone
I can sing me home

Maybe it’s that Jeff brought to mind an old song that has left fingerprints on my heart that sent me back in my mental jukebox, but I thought of a song Ginger and I found in a Toronto record store on our one visit there together. It was Carolyn Arends’ first album, and as soon as I could I got out my guitar to figure out the chords. It’s not hard to hear that she was singing in the aftermath of Dead Poets’ Society; the song is called “Seize the Day.”

seize the day, seize whatever you can
’cause life slips away just like hourglass sand
seize the day, pray for grace from God’s hand
then nothing will stand in your way
seize the day

When I go back through my musical history, there is a steady stream of Paul Simon songs. The one I have returned to in the past weeks is “Boy in the Bubble.”

these are the days of miracle and wonder
this is the long-distance call
the way the camera follows us in slo-mo
the way we look to us all, oh yeah
the way we look to a distant constellation
that’s dying in a corner of the sky
these are the days of miracle and wonder
and don’t cry baby don’t cry don’t cry, don’t cry

I guess you’re catching on that these are not particularly Christmas songs, yet these folks are fellow travelers on the road of life, of faith. Kris Kristofferson sings a song called “Let the Walls Come Down” that says,

on a cold dark corner i town
an old soul standing his ground
sang his heart right out at the world
passing him by
I can still hear every word
of a song that nobody heard
’cause he sang right out of his soul
into the sky, when he cried

let the walls come down
let the love come through
when it all comes down
well, it’s up to you

He may not sound like an angel chorus, but there is something sacred in his sound.

Jason Isbell is as good a songwriter as they come, and his last record has what may be my favorite love song, “Flagship.” The last verse says,

you gotta try and keep yourself naive
in spite of all the evidence believed
and volunteer to lose touch with the world
and focus on one solitary girl

I don’t know any other way.

I’ll finish this soundtrack with a song from Guy Clark, who died earlier this year–and it’s not “The Cape,” my personal national anthem. Instead, it is as true a word as can be said “Old Friends.”

and when the house is empty
and the lights begin to fade
and there’s nothing to protect you
except the window shade
and it’s hard to put your finger
on the thing that scares you most
and you can’t tell the difference
between an angel and a ghost

old friends they shine like diamonds
old friends you can always call
old friends Lord you can’t buy ’em
you know it’s old friends after all

O, rest beside the weary road and hear these angels sing.

Peace,
Milton

I haven’t written for the last few days because we have been traveling.

Wednesday night, after our Service of Reflection and Remembrance, Ginger and I loaded up a rented van with some furniture, pictures, and household goods we had packed in the barn and began driving to Durham, North Carolina (in New England, you have to specify; every state, it seems, has a town called Durham). Most of our belongings, along with my mother-in-law and the pups, stayed in Guilford, and we are going back there tonight. Still, the point of our trip was to put down roots. You see, we bought a house in Durham on Friday. It is, as Ginger likes to call it—thanks to a long affection for Sandra Cisneros’ writing—The House on Magnum Street.

Life in Guilford is good and we feel grateful and called to be there. The parsonage that we have made our home is lovely and cozy and, well, feels like home. And Stars Hollow. In our more adult moments, Ginger and I have talked about plans beyond—specifically how we can best prepare for retirement. When my mother died, she left money she hoped would go for a downpayment so we could have a house—a home—we could plan for. We looked up and down the Shoreline, as they call it in Connecticut, and spent lots of evenings talking about where our house should be, and we both came to the conclusion that Durham was the place. Our place. And so we bought The House on Magnum Street.

Since we didn’t leave Guilford until about 9:30 Wednesday night, we knew we would have to stop for the night along the way. When we looked at the map and saw Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was on our route, and we thought it only fitting and rather poetic to spend the night in Bethlehem the week before Christmas. It was after midnight before I tried booking a room on Expedia, so it would only let me book for the next night. We pulled off the highway and into the first hotel. No room. Same with the second. Not even the offer of a stable. We got back on the highway and drove to Allentown, where we found a bed and a complimentary breakfast before we got back on the road Thursday morning humming Billy Joel songs.

When Luke tells the story of Mary and Joseph’s journey, he says they went to Bethlehem because “he was of the house and lineage of David”—it was where his family was rooted. We don’t know how his branch ended up in Nazareth, but he knew where to go to be counted. Ginger’s family roots were in Birmingham, but her parents moved in with us six and a half years ago and then her father died; she still has cousins there, and loves Alabama football, but there is no home place to find. Though my family’s roots are in Texas, we stayed moving so much that mine never grew there. Though we didn’t know much of this little city when we moved here nine years ago, it has become our home. Our place to come and be counted.

In true Brasher-Cunningham fashion, we closed on the house at noon and had a party that night. On the way to the close, we went by the TROSA Thrift Shop and bought vintage furniture, as they say: chairs, small couches, a dining set. As the house filled up with friends that evening, I realized something. For the first time in my life, just days after my sixtieth birthday, I was doing a new thing: I chose a place rather than moving because of a job or family situation. I have moved many, many times, and moved to places that matter in my life. Places I love. The House on Magnum Street marks the first address chosen because it is where we want to end up. When i verbalized my epiphany to some of the folks at the party, one of them said, “I know. I read your book.”

The first completed draft of This Must Be The Place ended with the chapter on Durham, and our house on West Trinity Avenue, which is just around the corner for The House on Magnum Street. I had just signed off on the manuscript when Ginger told me it looked like we were heading to Guilford. I e-mailed my editor to say I needed to add a chapter. I wrote the Afterword on the plane back from my initial trip to Conncecticut; I had to imagine myself into a new locale, which has turned into a wonderful place to be for us. Our days on Church Street are far from over. We have a house, a church, and a barn. It seems, also, that our days in Durham are not done either. We are finding our way home by another way—a way that offers our hearts room to live in two places; there may have been no room in Bethlehem, but there is room in Guilford, and there is room in Durham.

Tonight we are flying back to Connecticut to keep the promises we have made there. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be back on the train to New York, and come home to Ginger and Rachel and the Schnauzers as we get ready for Christmas—and carols in the barn Christmas Eve. There will be room in our stable for whomever shows up. Friends will move into The House on Magnum Street on Thursday, using it as a place from which they can move their lives to Durham on a more permanent basis, and they will celebrate a Christmas of their own.

This Christmas, I’ve found home by another way.

Peace,
Milton

I’m seventy minutes away from the end of my sixtieth year, as I sit down to write, and I have a confession to make: I am not a mathematician. I did, however, just stumble upon something as I was trying to figure out what words to use to close out this decade and begin the next. One of the songs that has shown up more than once on this blog is “Seasons of Love” from the musical RENT. We all know it well enough to sing along for at least a couple of lines:

five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear
five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
how do you measure, measure a year?

That math is pretty easy: 365 x 24 x 60 = 525,600 minutes.

But here’s my where my end-of-decade foray with figures surprised me. I decided to see just how many hours I’ve been alive and so I did my calculation: 60 x 365 x24 = 525, 600 hours, which begs the question, how do I measure my life?

in hugs
in hope
in sorrows
in laughter
in late-night discussions
in friendships
in cookies
in stories
in houses
in schnauzers
in books
in words
in songs
in meals
in surprises
in failures
in faces
in grace
in gratitude
and yes, in love

The list is by no means exhaustive. I’ve spent nearly half of my life with Ginger, which is enough to have made my life worth living all on its own. I feel overwhelmingly fortunate to be me: to feel so loved and so cared for, to have so many stories to tell of all the ways love has found me. I’m going to borrow and bend some of Guy Clark’s words to finish up my fifties and see what is to come:

I’m sixty years old with a flour sack cape
tied all around my head
still climbing up on the garage
and will be till I’m dead
all these years the people said
I was acting like a kid
I did not know that I could not fly
and so I did

I’m one of those who knows that life
is just a leap of faith
spread your arms hold your breath
and always trust your cape

I think that equation will keep working for me.

Peace,
Milton

The fact that Ginger and I have been in Guilford a little over a year now means we are beginning to do things for the second time; our inaugural year is over. Last year I was invited to serve on the Christmas Tree Committee, which, I learned, meets only once a year on the second Saturday morning in December to go out, cut down the tree for the sanctuary, bring it back and set it up, and then have coffee and doughnuts together. This morning was my second committee meeting, and there is now a beautiful sixteen and a half foot tall tree at the front of the church and an empty box of Beach Donuts in one of the trash cans. It was a good morning together. Not just a morning; a memory. We took one of the things off of the church’s Advent To Do List and turned it into a morning we will remember because we did it together.

For many years, my shared Christmas tradition with my nephews was that we sent each other music. I would box up a few CDs—some old, some new—in hopes of offering them something they had not found on their own, and they did the same for me. I have memories down the years of one of them calling to say, “I’m driving home from school and listening to Jackson Browne (or Jason Isbell or Patty Griffin) and just wanted to say how much I love this record.” When Scott, the youngest nephew, got married, one of his friends and bandmates came up to me at the reception and said, “Uncle Milton! I’m so glad to meet you. Thanks for sending all the music.”

The streaming services have made it so boxing up CDs doesn’t make as much sense anymore, so this year I decided I would box up books instead. I drove up the Shoreline to the Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut, which is actually housed in four different locations around the little town.

The original location is an old house and several (unheated) out-buildings, carts, and trailers filled with books, and organized quite well. The other locations are in buildings that look more like storefronts, each one with specific types of books inside. I spent about an hour and a half at the original site and picked up several books that will be fun to send for Christmas. I also found one for myself: Donald Hall’s, Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry. Hall, a former US Poet Laureate, writes engaging and thoughtful prose as well as poetry. This was one I had not read, so it came home with me, and it was on the top of the stack when I put the books on the counter at the cash register.

The man behind the counter was one of the owners, I surmised from the conversation he had with the person in front of me, and, when it was my turn, I realized that part of his tradition in the store was to have a conversation with whomever was checking out. When he saw Hall’s book, he said, “I got to do a reading once with Donald Hall.” All he needed from me was an acknowledgement, and he was off on a wonderful story of how they had seen each other in the restaurant before the reading and were both dressed in jeans, maroon t-shirts, and denim over-shirts, as he called them. The whole time he was talking, he was ringing up my purchases. Then he put my books down, turned to me, and said, “When he read, he did it sitting down because he has had trouble with his legs as he has aged. But when I finished my reading, he stood up for me.” He smiled. “That was a wonderful day.” And he turned my trip to the bookstore into a memory that held more than the bag of books I carried to the car.

I’m looking at the stack of books that will make their way to Chicago and New Orleans early next week—Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, Paul Bowles, and Willa Cather, Desmond Tutu, Nora Gallagher, Anne Tyler, Steven Millhauser, Robertson Davies. All of them have a story behind why I pulled them off the shelf. I bought Buechner in seminary and he gave me lines from King Lear that I have hung on to:

The weight of these sad times we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

A passage from Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky led my friend Billy and I to write “Twenty One Times,” which is a lyric I’m proud and fond of. Nora Gallagher is one of a number of Episcopalian women (along with Madeleine L’Engle and Sarah Miles) whose writings have informed my faith. Desmond Tutu is one of my heroes. Anne Tyler gave me the image of the chair shaped like a hand, that helped remind me I was held when my depression was at its worst. Perhaps I should have told the poet behind the counter I was grateful for his story and his store because they reminded me that, even as Donald Hall stood up for him, the folks in these books have walked with me down the years and how I was sending them on new journeys with people I love.

Then again, maybe it was enough to hear his story and say, “Thanks for taking time to tell me,” which is what I did, and I drove home with a car full of books and memories.

Peace,
Milton

My plan for this evening was to write my blog post. Ginger was finishing her sermon for Sunday. The two of us were at a coffee shop in Branford, the town next to us. About seven, she said she was hungry and suggested we pick up a gift certificate we had at home for a restaurant across the town green from our house. When we pulled in the driveway, we both noticed the lights on in the barn. “You get the lights and I’ll grab the gift certificate and meet you back here at the car,” she said. I opened the barn door and found this:

Needless to say, I didn’t write tonight because love caught me by surprise. Our friends here in town threw a birthday party for me in our barn. (My birthday—my sixtieth birthday—is Monday.) Even in Guilford, Connecticut, it seems love surprises you by showing up in the barn. Gloria in excelsis de0.

Peace,
Milton