keepsake
there are some nights
when the sky turns
the color of friendship
and fades into the crisp
darkness of gratitude
friends old and new
around our table shared
food and stories love
and laughter as though
there was enough for all
we’ve washed the dishes
saved the leftovers and
turned out the lights
except those we always
leave on in the kitchen
spring will soon come
and summer will follow
footprints will fade
but not this indelible
wisp of memory
Peace,
Milton
Here’s what today looked like:
It was a good day. A joyful day. A memory.
I am grateful.
Peace,
Milton
Today marks two months since my mother died. This poem found me today.
symbol
the old cast iron skillet
has soaked up a cookbook
of stories, handed down
from Grandma to you
and then to me.
just salt—no soap—
to clean it; i run my hand
around the side and I
feel the soft oil that has
seasoned the metal,
remnants of memories
and meals, fried chicken,
and bacon by the pound.
these days it feels as heavy
as my grief, even as I scoop
the saved bacon grease
back and watch it melt
in the gentle heat of
the gas burner. I lay the
strips in the skillet one
by one, and the room
smells like family,
like joy—complete when
Ginger takes a bite
and says, “This is almost
as good as your mom’s.”
Peace,
Milton
I started a new Wendell Berry essay this morning, knowing I didn’t really have the energy to read the whole thing, and he still got me with his opening paragraphs:
A sentence of my own, written thirteen years ago, has stayed in my mind. In it, I was speaking of the connection between my work on the small hill farm where I live and my work as a poet: “This place has become the form of my work, in discipline, in the same way a sonnet has been the form and discipline of the work of other poets: if it does not fit it’s not true.”
This connection between the two kinds of work and between my work and this place has seemed to me both interesting and problematical. And my old statement of it is far too simple. I wrote the sentence because I felt it to be true. I still feel that it is, and think so too, but I can no longer feel it or think it so simply. (106)
It was the last sentence in particular—that he could no longer think or feel it so simply. I understand. But the word hooked me. Simple. What a wonderfully layered word. We use the word as though life, or whatever is easily reduced, and yet the simple truth is full of nuance and character.
Simple. I read the word and hear the melody of the old Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.”
tis a gift to be simple tis a gift to be free
tis a gift to come down where we ought to be
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
twill be in the valley of love and delight
I went searching for more on the song and learned learned was actually a dance—the Shaker version of “Uptown Funk,” if you will. (Jedediah, get the horse.) Later in the morning, I turned to Marilynne Robinson and an essay called “Cosmology”—which was not simple— where she speaks to some of the prevailing contemporary cultural views of who we are as human beings, responding in particular to a book called The New Atheists (which I have not read).
The exclusion of a religious understanding of being has been simultaneous with a radical narrowing of the field of reality that we think of as pertaining to us. This seems on its fact not to have been inevitable. We are right where we have always been in time, in the cosmos, experiencing mind, which may well be an especially subtle and fluent quantum phenomenon. Our sense of what is at stake in any individual life has contracted as well, another consequence that seems less than inevitable. We have not escaped, nor have we in any sense diminished , the mystery of our existence. We have only rejected any language that would seem to acknowledge it. (187-88)
In one of Madeleine L’Engle’s books (that I can’t reference right now) she talks about how our vocabulary shrinks during wartime. When we are in the middle of conflict, or when we are captured by fear, we begin to lose words, and, as a result, lose part of our humanity. But in A Stone for a Pillow, she described what she learned while traveling in Egypt.
Those old Egyptians also worshipped the baboon because every morning, when the sun rose, the baboons all clapped their hands for joy, applauding the reappearance of the sun. What a lovely picture, the baboons all clapping their hands and shouting for joy as the sun rose! So it seemed to the Egyptians that the baboons must have had something to do with the rising of the sun, and that their applause helped to bring the sun back up into the sky. (169-70)
After laying out all the words I found in my morning meandering, I suppose I should explain the simple connection between them. Sunday morning as I sat down in the sanctuary, I looked over the order of service and saw the choral introit was a setting of the prophet Micah’s question and answers:
What does the Lord require of you?
To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
Simple enough. Yet the simple truth is full of nuance, and layered with challenge and complexity. To do justice means to act and speak against those actions and forces that dehumanize others. It means working to right wrongs that have no direct effect on me. To love kindness means to remember, as the saying goes, that everyone is fighting a great battle, but not with us. It means to do more than the minimum daily requirement. It means to do more than live reciprocally. To walk humbly means to remember there is a God and it is not me. I am wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. I am not, however, God’s favorite.
We are on the cusp of some difficult days in our country. The political discussion is reducing the vocabulary to the language of violence, conquest, and conflict. Even these are pretty good days to be an American, we are being fed a steady diet of ideas that would have us believe scarcity and security should be the words we settle for. There is not enough. Be afraid. We are under attack. Fight back. Get what’s yours. Kick everyone else out.
No. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. Incarnate the simple truth that there is enough to go around by sharing, by risking. Incarnate the simple truth that noting can separate us from love by reaching out to someone not like you. Stand out under the stars, or on a beach, or in the middle of your back yard and act like a baboon, connected and caught up in the mystery that is larger than all of humanity. As Isaiah wrote,
For you will go out in joy, be led home in peace.
And as you go the land itself will break out in cheers;
The mountains and the hills will erupt in song,
and the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Prickly thorns and nasty briers will give way
to luxurious shade trees, sweet and good.
And they’ll remind you of the Eternal One
and how God can be trusted absolutely and forever.
(55:12-13, The Voice)
Simple.
Peace,
Milton
The summer between my junior and senior years at Baylor, I lived in Waco, even though I didn’t need to go to summer school, because I had a weekend pastorate at Pecan Grove Baptist Church, which sat on FM 107 between Oglesby and Mound. The church paid me enough to make my rent and do what I needed to do, so I played golf everyday with a group of guys who all agreed to take an early class and we spent our Texas summer afternoons walking the James Connally Municipal Golf Course.
I shot the best golf of my life during that summer because I was able to do something I never got to repeat: play the same course, day after day. Walking the same holes over and over again gave me reference points, which allowed me to learn from my game and make changes and improvements. I even broke eighty once or twice. I didn’t make any drastic changes as much as I paid attention, and walked the same road again and again.
Today after church I spoke to our Adult Forum, as they call it here, to basically tell my story. We are eleven days past our four month anniversary of arriving in Guilford and this was a chance for folks to get to know me a little better. To tell the story of my life is to talk a great deal about moving. As my brother Miller says, when someone asks where I’m from I have to answer with a paragraph, not a sentence. Instead of one course for my life, if you will, I have several places that feel like home. I feel connected to Africa—Zambia and Kenya, in particular—because that’s where I grew up. I feel connections to Baylor because of the friendships I made there, many of which remain vibrant, even though I don’t get there much. Fort Worth is home in its own way because of the youth group at University Baptist Church. Ginger and I call Boston our hometown because it’s where we grew up together. Durham has my heart because of the quality of friendship I have there. And now Guilford feels like the right place to be. I like it here. I feel good about being here, about staying here.
Yet it’s only been four months.
To feel welcomed can happen quickly; to belong takes time. To connect can feel immediate; to become friends takes months and years. You have to walk the course over and over, live through some stuff together, create rituals together. It can be rushed any more than they can make a fifteen year old whiskey in a week or two.
As I stand on the front end of our life here, I am overcome with gratitude for the home towns that still hold me, for the rituals and remembrances that surprise me from day to day and remind me of the tenacious tethers that keep holding on to me across miles and years—a song, a movie, a meal, a story, a cookie recipe—and those bonds are what give me hope to reach out again here, to start over, to take the time to belong here in Guilford as well.
And it does take time.
Peace,
Milton
Even before I read any of the reports of election-related happenings around the country, I felt depressed, so I am choosing to limit my intake as much as I can. Still, I am troubled. I can remember, after past elections that seemed contentious, but now pale by comparison, hearing people say we were blessed to live in a country where elections were free of violence. I fear we will not be able to say that this year.
fire
the guy running with the torch
is only scary after we have chosen
to cover the ground in gasoline.
it only takes a spark, you know,
and we’ve spent the last few
years making kindling of one
another, laying the ground
work for this scorched earth
of an election, this wildfire—
and soon, all those around . . .
Peace, with all my heart—
Milton
Maybe it’s not exactly the right word, but I was well into my thoughts for tonight when I realized I had already used weather; seasons will have to do. We have had a couple of early spring days here on the Shoreline, and it set me to thinking of songs about wind and rain and so forth, many of which have offered me hope and comfort over the years. The first is Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) singing “The Wind.”
I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul
where I end up, well, I think God only really knows . . .
Thunder shows up early in Emmylou Harris’ song of confession, “Prayer in Open D.”
there’s a valley of sorrow in my soul
and every night I hear the thunder roll
like the sound of a distant gun
over all the damage I have done . . .
I suppose I could do a whole post on nothing but rain songs. Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.”
scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
with frozen smiles to chase love away
human kindness is overflowing
and I think it’s going to rain today
The Indigo Girls sing “The Wood Song” and what it takes to weather the storms of life.
the thin horizon of a plan is almost clear
my friends and I have had a tough time
bruising our brains hard up against change
all the old dogs and the magiciannow I see we’re in the boat in two-by-two’s
only the heart that we have for a tool we could use
and the very close quarters are hard to get used to
love weighs the hull down with its weight
Our next song to the seasons is from Tom Waits–“You Can Never Hold Back Spring.”
you can never hold back spring
You can be sure that I will never stop believing
the blushing rose will climb
spring ahead or fall behind
winter dreams the same dream every time
you can never hold back spring
I had another song picked for our closing hymn, but all I could hear in my mind was
winter spring summer or fall
all you have to do is call
and I’ll be there–
you’ve got a friend
Close your eyes and make it a prayer.
Peace,
Milton
I come, in conclusion, to the difference between “projecting” the future and making a promise. The “projecting” of “futurologists” uses the future as the safest possible context for whatever is desired; it binds one only to selfish interest. But making a promise binds one to someone else’s future. (Wendell Berry, Standing by Words, 62)
promise
when Neil Armstrong walked on
the moon, they told us the future
would offer us the whole universe;
yet, all we got were space trucks.the future is a fantasy, or a
nightmare, depending on the
channel; predictions of doom or
dominance seem bankrupt of hope.there’s enough of life that leaves
us feeling like clay pigeons on a
skeet range: hit or not, we’re going to
end up on the ground in pieces.can we let that be the last word?
let’s go out under the stars and
find ourselves; tell me again what
it is to be friends, to be together,to mean what we said, even when
life moves us like chess pieces . . .
there’s no strategy to stop that,
so let’s go back to the memory:the stack of sacred stones where
we pledged to be friends for life,
whatever came, or where we went–
and here we are, just as we said.here, even though miles separate,
and circumstances complicate.
here, in heart and mind, flesh and
blood. don’t go on without me.
Peace,
Milton
When I was in elementary school and the first part of junior high, we lived in Lusaka, Zambia. One of my clearest memories is of our Sunday after-church ritual: we would come home and have lunch, and then Dad would wash the dishes and Miller and I would dry them. While we worked, we listened to a British music program called Top of the Pops, which was a hit parade of sorts, and they always debuted new music. New music, in those years, more often than not meant something new by the Beatles. The clearest memory of all is the day I heard “Hey Jude” for the first time. I don’t remember how the deejay introduced it, other than he was sure it was something monumental and different; then Paul started singing.
I bought the single the next day and wore it out.
I woke to the news this morning that record producer George Martin had died in the night. He was 
ninety. He was also the man who was responsible for “Hey Jude,” as well the Beatles being known at all, and also for helping to create most all of the memorable moments we know in their songs, which means he was responsible for much of the soundtrack of my growing up.
In an age where I can build a forty-plus track recording in GarageBand on my Mac, he recorded and produced the multilayered sound of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour on four track analog equipment, which means he literally did it by hand—with scissors and scotch tape.
I didn’t know that was going on. I think the Beatles had broken up before I even knew who George Martin was. But I can remember what it felt like as a kid to listen to “Nowhere Man,” “Got To Get You Into My Life,” and as a teenager to find “Back in the USSR,” “Blackbird,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” to name only a few—oh, and “Eight Days A Week” and “I’m Looking Through You” and “Rocky Raccoon” and “The Long And Winding Road” and “Get Back”—with your high heel shoes and I love that sweater . . . .
Someone I never knew, and who never knew me, put his fingerprints all over my life because of the way he made music, because of what he saw in the four lads from Liverpool that others had missed, because he put his heart and soul into his craft and believed in what he was doing.
I listened to Beatles songs all day as I was cooking for our Lenten dinner tonight at church and realized, even beyond my early years, these songs are at the heart of the soundtrack of my life. I am grateful, not only for the songs, but also for the gift of being of an age where I got to hear those songs for the first time when they were played for the first time. Thank you, George.
Now it’s time to say good night. . . .
Peace,
Milton
Towards the end of the day at work it fell my lot to help a woman whose phone was not working as it should. The repair was fairly straight forward and under warranty. That was not the story. Somewhere along the way, she had decided things were not going to go well. By the time she left, she had dealt with four of us, and no one—including her—had had a good experience. Her anger and attitude was so toxic it almost had an odor. When I realized what was happening didn’t feel situational—that this is how life felt for her—I became incredibly sad because of one detail I had learned early in our conversation: she was a middle school teacher. I’m almost sixty years old, I thought to myself, so I can take this, but there are some seventh graders that are getting killed out there.
I don’t know her story, other than the brief chapter I got to read. I assume she is a deeply wounded person. The point of talking about her is not to disparage her. But ending my workday with her took me back to something I read as I began the day with Wendell Berry, still talking about language.
I . . . am speaking simply from my own observation that when my awareness of how I feel overpowers my awareness of where I am and who is there with me, I am sick, diseased. This can be appropriately extended to say that if what I think obscures my sense of whereabout and company, I am diseased. (42)
As I read those words this morning, they took me to a different place, as did the rest of his essay, which i’m sure will its way to these pages in the days to come. As I sat down to write tonight, and reread some of his quotes I had set aside, I heard him in a different light, and I noticed that at some point this morning I had written in the margins, depression is dis-ease.
Disease. Dis-ease. Yes, another “dis-“ word to add to the growing list we are accumulating. Separated, disconnected from ease, from wholeness. I have learned over the years that the lie of depression—which can still hook me—is that I am alone. I could see it in her as she sat at the table tonight, even as she knocked the wind out of me. She believed the lie as well; she was dis-eased. The more toxic the encounter became, the more I realized, wherever her feelings were coming from, I was the one in the crosshairs, so I leaned into my coworkers and took myself out of the encounter before it became a power struggle, or before I responded out of my own hurt. As I was walking down the stairs, an old Randy Newman song came to mind titled, “I Just Want You To Hurt Like I Do.” When he sings it, he says (in his satirical way) that he wrote it as a kind of “We Are The World” sing-a-long. The opening verse says,
I ran out on my children
and I ran out on my wife
gonna run out on you too baby
I done it all my life
everybody cried the night I left
well almost everybody did
my little boy just hung his head
and I put my arm put my arm around his little shoulder
and this is what I said:“Sonny, I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
honest I do, honest I do, honest I do.”If I had one wish
one dream I knew would come true
I’d want to speak to all the people of the world
I’d get up there, I’d get up there on that platform
first I’d sing a song or two you know I would
then I’ll tell you what I’d do
I’d talk to the people and I’d say
“It’s a rough rough world, it’s a tough tough world—well, you know
and things don’t always, things don’t always go the way we plan
but there’s one thing, one thing we all have in common
and it’s something everyone can understand
all over the world sing alongI just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
honest I do, honest I do, honest I do.”
The song is hard because we know what it feels like to lash out, to hurt someone out of our own hurt, as if that creates some kind of bond, some kind of community. I remember being with Ginger one day in the line at a department store. We watched as the cashier lived out Newman’s song on most all of the people in front of us. She was hurting; she wanted us to share. Our encounter proved to be no different, except that Ginger had the wherewithal—or, I should say, the compassion—to say, “I hope your day gets better.” The woman caught herself, and then held up the line while she told Ginger her story. Her whole demeanor changed.
As I walked to my car, I thought again of Kumalo’s words from Cry, the Beloved Country that I quoted last night:
Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering.
When the woman told me I had done a terrible job and she wanted to talk to someone else, I allowed her words to hurt my feelings. About all the kindness and love I could offer was to not strike back and to get someone else. I did not offer much in the way of healing. I will pray she comes to some balance where her feelings do not overpower her sense of where she is and who is with her, particularly in her classroom, so that she has more to say than, “I just want you to hurt like I do.”
We do share our pain in common, but it need not be contagious. We can be wounded healers. We can put each other at ease.
Peace,
Milton