don't eat alone

I had visions of a post and even the beginnings of a poem for tonight, but the days were not accomplished to see either born this night. I will, therefore lean into an unintentional tradition on this blog of posting my Christmas story, which I appear to have done for the last few years.

A Faraway Christmas

As we gather together on this Silent Night,
To sing ‘round the tree in the soft candlelight,

From a Faraway Christmas, from time that’s grown cold,
Comes a story, you see, that has seldom been told.

Of all of the legends, the best and the worst,
From Christmases all the way back to the first,

This little tale isn’t often remembered
From then until now, down through all those Decembers.

But I found an old copy tucked away on a shelf,
And I turned through the pages, and I thought to myself,

Of all of the times between now and then,
This is the Christmas to hear it again.

Once upon a time in a place we might know,
‘Cause their woods, like ours, often fill up with snow,

Was a small little hamlet — a Long Ago Town —
Of no great importance, or no real renown,

Filled with people who seemed fairly normal to me,
With names like Francesca, Francine, and McGee.

They had puppies and children, ate bread and ice cream,
They went shopping and swimming, they slept and they dreamed;

They laughed and did laundry, they danced and they dined,
And they strung Christmas lights on the big Scottish Pine

That grew in the square in the middle of town,
And when Christmas was over, they took the lights down.

They read the newspaper, they sometimes told jokes,
And some of the children put cards in the spokes

Of their bicycle tires, so they made quite a din
Till it came time for parents to call the kids in.

Yet for all of the things that kept people together,
The nice festive feeling, the Christmas Card weather,

For all of the happiness one was likely to hear,
This Faraway Christmas was marked, mostly, by fear.

Well, yes, they were frightened — but that’s still overstated;
What bothered folks most really could be debated.

Some were tired (exhausted), some were sad or depressed,
Some — the best way to say it — well, their lives were a mess.

Some felt pressure from not having paid all the bills,
Some were keeping dark secrets that were making them ill;

Some felt guilty and thought they were headed for hell,
But the town seemed so happy, who could they tell?

So everyone kept all their feelings inside,
And wished they had someone in whom to confide,

To say, “Life is lousy,” or “I’ve made a mistake,”
Or “Sometimes I’m so sad I don’t want to awake,”

Or “I miss my Grandma,” or “I loved my cat,”
Or “I never, no never get my turn at bat.”

Everyone kept it in, no one said a thing
Until once Christmas Eve, when the man they called Bing

Came to turn on the lights on the tree in the square
And nobody — not anyone — no one was there,

And he looked at the lights as he sat on the curb
And he said — to no one — “I feel quite disturbed;

“I know that it’s Christmas, when I should feel warm,
But I don’t think this year that I can conform.

It’s been hardly two months since my friend passed away;
How can I smile when he’s not here to say,

“’Merry Christmas’?” he asked and burst into tears,
And all of the sadness from all of the years

Came out of his eyes and ran down his cheeks,
And he thought he would sit there and blubber for weeks.

When Samantha showed up — she had not been expected —
And sat down beside him ‘cause he looked neglected.

He looked up through his tears, she said, “You look kinda bad.”
And he answered, “The truth is I feel really sad.”

When she heard those words, tears jumped straight to her eyes,
“The truth is,” she said, “I tell too many lies.

I want people to like me, so I try to act cool,
But deep down inside I feel just like a fool.”

So they sat there and cried, like a sister and brother,
And were joined by one, and then by another,

With a story to tell and feelings to free,
And they wept and they hugged ‘neath the big Christmas Tree.

Can you imagine how many tears fell,
After all of the years that no one would tell

How much they were hurting, how broken or mad,
How long they had smiled when they really felt sad.

How long does it take to clean out your heart,
To get it all out, to make a new start?

That answer’s not easy to you and to me,
But they found out that night, those folks ‘round the tree.

They cried until daybreak, till the first rays of dawn
Broke over the tree tops and spread ‘cross the lawn,

In the new morning light Bing could see ‘cross square;
He also could see the whole town was out there.

They had come through the night, first one, then another
To sit down together like sister and brother

To pour out their hearts for the first time in years,
And let out their feelings, their sadness, their tears.

Samantha stood up and then turned back to Bing,
“You started us crying, now help us to sing.”

So he started a carol, the one he knew best,
About joy to the world, and it burst from his chest.

The others joined in, not because they weren’t sad,
But because they’d admitted the feelings they had,

Everyone sang along, both the sad and the scared,
Because true friends are found when true feelings are shared.

There’s more to the story, but our time is short,
Of how life was changed I cannot now report,

But instead I must ask why this story’s forgotten;
It’s not hopeless or humdrum, it’s not ugly or rotten.

Do you think it’s because people said how they felt,
And if we tell the story then our hearts, too, might melt?

What if we spoke the truth, what if we named our fears,
What if we loosed the sadness we’ve tied up for years?

Would we ever stop crying, would the dawn ever come?
And like those in the story, once the tears had begun

Would we sit on the curb, first one, then another,
And talk about life like sister and brother.

Oh, that is exactly why I chose to tell
This lost little tale we know all too well.

Our world is no different; we’re frightened and sad,
We feel helpless and hopeless, and certainly mad,

But none of those words is the last on this Night
That we wait for the Child, that we pray for the Light,

That we sing of the good news the angels did bring,
And we wish for peace, more than any one thing.

Yes, this story that came from a Long Ago Town
Of no great importance, of no real renown,

Could be ours, if true feelings were what we would say;
And we’d find such a Christmas not so faraway.

Thanks for making the journey together.

Peace,
Milton

Today was my first day riding the train since I finished The Illusion of Separateness. As I was packing my book bag, I looked around for new literary accompaniment and saw my copy of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which I started rereading before we left Durham (I read it two or three times as a high school English teacher) and then lost it in the move. I found it again last week. On a rainy day when the grey clouds matched the gathering storm of sadness inside me, a book about the Vietnam War was probably not the most uplifting choice, but I wanted to finish it before I started another.

The title speaks to the things the soldiers carried both physically and emotionally, both in combat and back home. The feelings are raw and honest; the stories are compelling and difficult to read. I love this book and, in many ways, it is a long way from who I am. I don’t think war has been or is a solution. Responding to violence with violence does not create peace or foster hope. And I’m not much of a fan or war as a metaphor for life. I found early on that I didn’t help myself by thinking of myself as fighting my depression. I did not want to be at war with myself, so I looked for other metaphors. War—what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. (Say it again, y’all.)

I was in junior high and high school during the Vietnam War, and for much of that time I was in Africa where I heard it described in something other than American terms. It never made sense to me. One of the first songs I learned on my guitar was the “Feel Like I’m A-Fixin’ To Die Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish. By the time I turned eighteen, during my freshman year at Baylor, the war and the draft were over but they were still doing the lottery. My birthday was number eighteen. I have often wondered what I would have done had I been drafted.

I know: what does this have to do with getting us to Bethlehem? It strikes me that Jesus was born during wartime. Maybe part of the reason it made sense for the gospel writers to link the birth to what Isaiah had written was the desperate hope for a prince of something other than conquest and oppression—a prince of peace. Who could even imagine such a thing? A couple of nights ago I wrote about the power of the particular; O’Brien speaks to the same idea, saying a true war story doesn’t speak in absolutes or ideas, but relishes in details, in what happened—or what is remembered.

Stories are for joining the past to the future.Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you get from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story. (36)

It is not an overstatement to say that most all of human history could be viewed as life during wartime. Pick most any year and someone is fighting somewhere. The same is true of our history as Americans. We have spent many more years in conflict than we have at peace. But that is not the whole story, or even the best story.

There is a lineage of love and compassion that runs all the way back to Bethlehem, even all the way back to the very first light. We can choose to see ourselves marching as to war, or we can choose to see ourselves as part of the story of redemption and hope. The cast of humanity is the same for both; we must choose how the story gets both told and remembered, what things we carry and what we leave behind. We can see the world with eyes of fear or eyes of faith and trust. This past year I was reminded of a song I love that had slipped out of my story when the Common Woman Chorus sang at our church in Durham. It seems a good place to stop tonight, here on the edge of the little town that will hold the hopes and fears of all the years . . . .

Rest, now, and listen to Susan Warner, the performer and songwriter of “May I Suggest.”

May I suggest, may I suggest to you
May I suggest this is the best part of your life
May I suggest this time is blessed for you
This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright
Just turn your head and you’ll begin to see
The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight
The reasons why–why I suggest to you
Why I suggest this is the best part of your life

There is a world that’s been addressed to you
Addressed to you, intended only for your eyes
A secret world like a treasure chest to you
Of private scenes and brilliant dreams that mesmerize
A lover’s trusting smile, a tiny baby’s hands
The million stars that fill the turning sky at night
Oh I suggest, oh I suggest to you
Oh I suggest this is the best part of your life

There is a hope that’s been expressed in you
The hope of seven generations, maybe more
And this is the faith that they invest in you
It’s that you’ll do one better than was done before
Inside you know, inside you understand
Inside you know what’s yours to finally set right
And I suggest and I suggest to you
And I suggest this is the best part of your life

This is a song comes from the west to you
Comes from the west, comes from the slowly setting sun
With a request, with a request of you
To see how very short the endless days will run
And when they’re gone and when the dark descends
Oh we’d give anything for one more hour of light
And I suggest this is the best part of your life

Peace,
Milton

When I consider that the early Christians could have chosen any night to mark the one in which Jesus came into the world, I wonder why they didn’t pick this night—the longest night—to show, as John said, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it. Then again, marking the birth four nights into the days growing longer has its own poetry. The truth is life carries quite a mixture of both. The most beautiful parts of any day are at sunrise and sunset (though I’ve seen many more of the latter)—when the darkness and light are intermingled, the colors and the shadows are painted together, and we are presented with an ongoing circle that makes beginnings and endings unclear, other than knowing one leads into the other and neither lasts forever.

Nighttime is its own incarnate metaphor. We use it to name what is unknown, scary, disorienting, or depressing. Light is the symbol of insight and discovery, of hope and possibility. Yet, there are shadows in the daytime and stars at night.

We make a bigger deal about the days getting longer during this time of year than we do about their beginning to shorten at the end of July. We have even taken time into our own hands and acted as though we can make the days even longer with Daylight Savings. A couple of weeks after the days began to grow shorter last summer, I got a tattoo. I started to say, my first tattoo, but I think I may be done. Who knows.

I was inspired by reading an article similar to this one about Project Semicolon who said,

A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you, and the sentence is your life.

As one who lives with depression, and who went through several years when it had a strong hold on me, I was deeply moved by the hope they were working to cultivate. When I mentioned it to Ginger she was unhesitatingly supportive. On the weekend of the second anniversary of my father’s death, I went to Dogstar Tattoo in Durham and asked them to mark me for life with this powerful punctuation mark because it also said something to and for me about my grief: it, also, is not the end of the sentence.

As much as I love Advent, December is usually a difficult month for me. I am not cut off from the celebration or unable to participate, but in the same way the dark and light intermingle at sunset, I have periods—minutes, hours, days—when I feel as far away from the Manger as the Magi in the desert. On other days, I like the innkeeper, have no room for the child. Ginger and I were talking today about the power of Philips Brooks’ words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”—”the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” So are the dreams and failures, the loves and losses. It is not always easy to stand at that intersection because the angels are not always singing.

In these I have heard from friends about a teenager who survived a suicide attempt, some who are marking—again—the death of parents or spouses or siblings, others who are dealing with new physical limitations that limit what they can do, and then some who are coping with distance between them and those they love that they have allowed to become normal. I have friends I know who are hurting that I can get to and others I can’t. Last night, for no particular reason I could feel the weight of the dark. Ginger could see it—and even named it—but it stayed for a while nonetheless. So I baked. The kitchen remains a depression-free zone for me, for which I am grateful. However, I carried the weight to the car with me this morning, along with cookies for my coworkers. I took off my sweater when I got to work and saw the mark on my arm as I sat the bag of cookies the table. There is more to the sentence . . . .

I know it’s not as easy as that. It’s not easy at all, this life we are living. That, however, is not the last word. We are not alone; we are together; day or night, Love never lets go.

Peace;
Milton

Two Sundays ago, one of the men in our church stopped me after worship and asked if I wanted to be on the Christmas Tree Committee. Before I committed, I asked what it involved and he said, “Meet here next Saturday morning to go cut down the tree and put it up in the front of the sanctuary.” So I did. Six or seven of us went to a local tree farm that gave us access and cut down a sixteen-foot tree, brought it back on a truck, and installed it in the front of the church. Then we had coffee and donuts together. I love this committee. I think I’ll be a lifer.

The church traditionally decorates the tree with mittens and gloves and hats and scarves that are then taken to shelters and places where people who need them can find them. This morning we had some an additional adornment: a large paper link chain made by our children. Our children’s minister explained that every kid had been given the opportunity to write specific one thing they were going to do in the coming year to show God’s love to other people. Then they made the individual strips into the ornament chain that graced our tree.

Our church has two pastors, Ginger and Sarah, who alternate preaching responsibilities. Today Sarah preached from Luke 1 and the surrounding John’s birth. The more she spoke about Elizabeth and Zechariah, the more I was moved by the particularity of the story. I love the poetry of John’s first chapter—“In the beginning was the Word . . .—but the story doesn’t really get going until there are names and faces. Sarah spent some time talking about names and their meanings. She mentioned that John is the second most popular boys name, and it means gracious. Then she said, “Would it be nice if being gracious were ordinary?”

She then spent some time with the questions in Luke’s account. Zechariah asked, “What will this child become?” When Mary got word that she, an unmarried teenager, was pregnant, she asked, “How can this be?” Then Sarah added, “God’s ways are rough in this world.” The real story behind our pageants and Christmas card scenes was not easy on the participants. It is no exaggeration to say it cost them their lives. The Incarnation is more than a theological idea. It is real people encountering God in their particular lives and leaving themselves open to the reckless raging fury that we call the Love of God.

Neither Mary nor Zechariah got answers to their questions, yet somehow they both end up singing because they found Love in their particular situations. They were willing to live with love rather than answers. Then Sarah asked another question: “What lessons have you had to learn or unlearn or relearn along the way?” The one that came to mind this morning is the one I relearn most every year during Advent: as we tell the story of Love’s arrival at one particular point in one particular time, I called to remember that is the only way love comes—with hands and feet, with words and deeds. In the flesh.

In the opening song of Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas asks,

why’d you pick such a backward time
and such a strange land?

Why Elizabeth and Mary? Of all the people in the world, why these two cousins? Why Zechariah, or Mary Magdelene, or Peter? Why Judas, for that matter? Then I think of the people in my life who made love real to me and I wonder why they were at that particular place at that particular moment? Could life really be that infused with grace that the people who showed up were the ones I most needed? I don’t mean to sound as though things were engineered, or that they were somehow mysteriously led into my life. I think in those moments those people had the grace to respond to the need in front of them, and that our lives are filled with moments where either incarnate love in the particular or we don’t.

Most all of the significant relationships in my life began as incidental contact. We didn’t know where it was going, but we gave ourselves room to ask, what could this become? In similar ways, I have some important relationships that lie dormant because somehow we quit asking that question for one reason or another. Love lives in the particular, in the possibility or what might grow, of what might become of an encounter.

Zechariah could have demanded answers. Mary could have told Gabriel to pick someone else. In their own ways, I suppose, they wrote their replies and made their links in the chain. Who knows how things might have rolled out had they not chosen to say yes to Love. In the moments tomorrow, when we are called to add another link to the chain, may we continue to decorate our world in all the colors of Love.

Peace,
Milton

He did what they told him to do. He would have done anything they told him to do. He hid inside the pronoun we. (The Illusion of Separateness 189)

Life is a team sport. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve uttered that sentence I’d have enough to take us all to dinner. Being together is a fundamental human value: we were made to live in community. Yet tonight I find myself looking again at my metaphor. Part of the reason is the quote from the amazing novel I finished today on my lunch hour. That last sentence has haunted me for the rest of the day.

He hid inside the pronoun we.

The problem with a sports metaphor is it holds in implicit competition: the we is defined by a them. We join together to win, to defeat, to crush. The verbs only escalate. Yes, there is something wonderful about winning together, even as a fan. When the Red Sox came back from a three-games-to-none deficit to defeat the Yankees and go on to win their first World Series in eighty-six years, it felt great to be together. I also remember in those days there was a local entrepreneur who created a clothing line of “Yankee Hater” hats and t-shirts. The logo laid the Y and the H over one another in a way that mocked the New York logo. They sold well briefly and then died out. We wanted to be drawn together by more than hatred or dislike. We weren’t Yankee Haters as much as we were Sox Lovers—those who were deeply connected by our failures and disappointments and near misses, and then by the almost improbable taste of victory. I remember how the cemeteries in Massachusetts filled up with Red Sox paraphernalia. The tombstones of parents and grandparents who had died before the Curse of the Bambino was broken were decorated with pennants and hats. We was a good thing because it was about the team we loved.

All the shouting about the data breach and Bernie Saunders over the last couple of days, and the subsequent infighting within the Democratic Party alongside of the divisive and, well, toxic proclamation from Trump and others in the midst of the street fight that is the race for the Republican nomination leads me back to the quote that began this post. Choosing teams in our current cultural climate leans toward the dangerous side of we, because that we is being defined by them: the enemy, the danger, Those of Whom We Should Be Afraid. And the sport is winner take all.

A disclaimer here: I have not watched any of the presidential debates and I don’t intend to do so between now and next November because I don’t think they offer anything other than the political equivalent of roller derby or professional wrestling. (Apologies to both of those sports.) I’m sure at some level most of the candidates have ideas they want to communicate beyond inciting a mob mentality against any number of designated enemies, but the debates are about winning a fake fight. There is nothing there to help build consensus or true community.

When the decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed, it seems as though the cultural climate shared similar weather to life in our time. Palestine was occupied, Pilate had all the backbone of a member of Congress, and the poor were taking it in the teeth so that the economy could feed the rich. Through most of Jesus’s earthly ministry he kept having to deal with questions—from both his friends and his enemies—that pointed to Them as a way of defining who We would be. Why do you eat with Them? Why do you listen to Them? Why are you seen with Them? Shouldn’t We do something about Them? Jesus’s response erased the lines. He ate dinner with the rich, the arrogant, the pious, the poor, the outcast, and the faithful. And then he told a story about a great banquet where the instructions were simply to fill the room with whomever would come.

For all my love of food, I keep talking about a team and the metaphor is right in front of me: Life and Faith are meals together where everyone is fed.

Last Sunday on my way out of church, one of our members said to me, “Would you like to meet Jacques Pépin?” My answer was a quick yes. Jacques Pépin is one of the great chefs of our time. Turns out he lives in Madison—the next town up from Guilford—and he was signing his new book this morning—the day after his eightieth birthday—at an amazing local bookstore, R. J. Julia Booksellers. Our church members picked Ginger and me up before I had to go into work and I stood in line to have him sign my copy of his memoir. Ginger snapped a picture. On the title page he wrote, “To Milton, Cook with Love. Jacques Pépin.”

Indeed. Life is a dinner party. Life is a team sport. Whether baseball or breakfast, life is wasted if it is not fueled by love. To be driven by conquest or fear or hatred or even righteous indignation turns life into little more than some sort of cosmic demolition derby where no one is left standing and everyone is damaged. We is not a place to hide or a bunker from which to lob bombs on Them. We is not a place to justify our sense of superiority or fortify our privilege. We is not a place to protect what’s ours or make sure things go our way at all cost. We is a banquet table with an open invitation. We is a ball park on the best summer afternoon you can imagine. Sit here at the table. Sit here in the bleachers. Bring whomever you can find.

And turn off the television.

Peace,
Milton