don't eat alone

advent journal: our best work

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 15, 2015

The train ride into New Haven was significant this morning because I finished my rereading of Walking on Water. It will go back on the shelf for another couple of years. In the closing pages, L’Engle talked about the importance of editing and revising for an artist. Honing one’s craft does not necessarily make it easier. As you improve, you raise your standards and your goals.

As a writer struggles to grow, more and more work becomes necessary. (186)

When I was an English teacher, one of the hardest things to communicate was the importance of editing. Students would turn in their first drafts as if they were finished pieces. I remember reading someone’s account of a professor who, when she turned in a paper, would ask, “Is this your best work?” She took it to mean the professor didn’t want the paper, so she would go back and revise it. After the scene played four or five times, when he asked she said, “Yes.” He took the paper and replied, “Good. Now I’ll read it.”

These nightly offerings are not as edited as I would like, but they are not the first thing I wrote down either. Editing is what makes writing good. It’s hard work. It takes time. And it’s painful. My students in Winchester audibly groaned when I told them their essays could not be longer than seven hundred and fifty words. My point was to teach them how to revise and distill and focus. I would offer Blaise Pascal’s words:

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

What I wanted my students to see was there was almost always room to grow, to see new things. To read back through an essay on a different day and a different time meant to see it with different eyes. To ask someone else to read it and give feedback was an exercise in both artistic and relational growth. We can’t see it all in one trip.

L’Engle shifted her focus as she made the final turn toward home, talking about coming to terms with all we don’t know in the world. The point of our faith is not that we have The Answer, or any answers for that matter. The point of our existence is not to be in control. One of the sentences I underlined in an earlier simply said, “Love, not answers.” There is more to being human than a mere intellectual encounter with the world. She wrote,

Despite our technology there is far more that we do not know than we know. (191)

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my pen and wrote in the margin, “A revising life.” As we gain new perspectives, we need to go back, revise, and rewrite. I’m not talking about jettisoning what came before, or throwing things away. In some sense, everything matters. The faith of my childhood looks very different from the faith that feeds me today and yet there is a progression, a connection. I am deeply grateful for how I grew up; it has helped me to get to where I am now. My faith matters to me today because I have kept revising. I have let God grow up with me, if you will.

Some years ago, I read an article stating that the body of knowledge in our world doubles every five years. One article I found tonight said that doubling occurs in just twelve months; another said it will not be long before it is down to twelve hours. When I was a kid I was fascinated by the idea of a Renaissance Man—someone who could know everything about everything. During the Renaissance, it took over a century for the body of knowledge to double. A person could master a good portion of it all. Not any more. We cannot know everything. We can’t even put together a group of people who know everything.

How should we then live? As we struggle to grow, more and more work becomes necessary. To decide we know all we need to know, or that we’ll leave the task to others in forsaking our calling as human beings. In the Incarnation, God gives us an example of how we can choose to continue to grow. However we picture God, coming to earth in the form of a human was growth, a new experience—even for the Supreme Deity. If God can continue to grow and change, are we not called to go and do likewise?

As we follow the star to Bethlehem, are we doing our best work?

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: night ride home

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 14, 2015

7

It was raining when I walked out of work
to make the three block trek to where my car
was parked so I could snake through the city,
the construction, and catch the highway home.

I slipped my hearing aids in my pocket,
losing the high harmonies of the street’s
sounds; the small but persistent rain drops
hit my shirt and held hands to leave me soaked.

in another year, this would have been snow,
and I would have felt like a kid out of school,
kicking my way across the parking lot,
mouth wide open to catch the falling flakes.

on this night I’m listening to the tap
of the rain on the kitchen window box,
the drone of the dryer doing its job,
as I search the house for the right words

to connect to the couple that might as
well have been homeless who braved the open
road, moving at the mercy of the weather
and the angels, without reservations.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: joy to you and me

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 13, 2015

4

My birthday trip to the Mark Twain House and Museum has given me a lot to think about—pertaining to both the house and the man. When Twain sold the residence in the early twentieth century, he was broke and needed money. He was also grief-stricken. The house changed hands several times and was a residence, a boy’s school, and a public library; by the mid-seventies it was slated for demolition. It was not until his centennial approached that someone stepped up to renovate and preserve it. By that time, most of the original furnishings had been lost or sold, and whatever the interior had looked like was not always easy to discern. After a great deal of money and research, the curators did their best to make the house look and feel as it did when the Clemens family called it home.

Today Ginger preached from the story of Ezra (ch. 1-3) and his leading the people back from Persia to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. Like the folks in Hartford, none of the Hebrews had seen the previous edifice. They, too, were drawing from stories and tradition, from details passed down. When they laid the foundation, the story says:

All of the people shouted with praise to the Lord because the foundation of the Lord’s house had been laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and heads of families, who had seen the first house, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this house, although many others shouted loudly with joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, because the people rejoiced very loudly. The sound was heard at a great distance. (3:11-13)

On this third Sunday of Advent, we light a candle signifying joy. In many churches, this is the one pink candle among purple ones, and this Sunday is as close to the halfway point as we get, I suppose. Here in the darkest and longest nights of our lives, we light a candle for joy.

The entry way to the Twain house was intended to impress. The woodwork was intricate, the space captivating. Yet it was quite dark. Our docent pointed to the two light fixtures in the room, which were ornate in their own right, and he reminded us that in Twain’s time they would have been gas lanterns. He then directed our attention to the walls and the small silver geometric shapes painted in a pattern that looked almost Egyptian, so artful and intricate as to give the impression that they were inlaid mother-of-pearl, or the like. He went on to say that the gas lanterns flickered in ways their electric counterparts do not, so not only did the silver shapes on the wall brighten the room, they also picked up the flicker of the flames and made the whole room seem as if it shimmered in the darkness.

Tonight we had our Lessons and Carols service at church. All the various aspects of our music ministry participated: adult choir, handbells, childrens’ choir, soloists, and congregation. As the readers moved us from Creation through the Prophets to the Gospel passages that make me wish for Linus’ reading from Luke 2, I was reminded how many times the angels have to say, “Don’t be afraid.” They gave the same instructions to Mary and Joseph and the shepherds, just to name a few. As the angels proclaimed The Glorious Impossible, the fear of those receiving the message moved from fear to joy as the shimmer of the angels’ words and wings brought new light, new insight, new hope to the darkness: good tidings of great joy.

Thanks to the new movie titled Joy, a Google search was not very productive when I typed in the word, but down at the bottom of the page was a link for “biblical joy,” implying it might be something different. When I clicked there I found several sites whose definition centered around God’s being in control, as if joy required some sense of certainty. That’s not how the stories felt tonight as I saw the shepherds move from shielding themselves from the spectacle of the angels to sprinting into town to see the child. At a couple of places in Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle quote a theologian who says, the opposite of sin is faith not virtue. In the same manner, the opposite of fear is joy—not certainty, but comfort. Here in these dark days, the sounds of weeping and joy may seem indistinguishable because our grief is not the antithesis of our joy. Our memories carry both together. When we re-member one another, we give birth to Love once again in our time and in our circumstance, and our fears—that we are not enough, that we cannot survive, that love is not the last word—fade into the darkness. In his book Following the Equator, which he wrote after his daughter died, Mark Twain said: “Grief can take care of itself, but to get full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

Rejoice, we are not alone. God is with us. And we are together.

I’ll close with the benediction another minister said he used at his church this morning:

joy to the world, all the boys and girls
joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
joy to you and me

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: I love to tell the story

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 12, 2015

8

advent journal: I love to tell the story

When it comes to my birthday, I can count on three things: one, Ginger will make sure I feel very celebrated; two, that they day will involve something I have never done before; and, three, that I will not know what’s coming until it happens. Today stayed true to form, with the added layer of our being in a new place and faraway from those who have been a part of our celebrations over the past several years.

We were not far into the day before I was doing something that was new to me: I joined the “Christmas Tree Committee” to go out and cut down a sixteen-foot tree and set it up in the front of our church. Shortly after, Ginger and I set out on the highway looking for adventure and ended up at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford. The tour through the mansion and corresponding exhibits revealed a man with a big heart, a strong mind, a mischievous spirit, and someone acquainted with grief. The time there made me want to come home and read his books, one of which–A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court–was first published on December 12, 1889.

The whole first floor of the house was dedicated to entertaining guests. They had extensive dinner parties several nights a week, even though they couldn’t really afford it. So here was a guy who loved to write and thrived on being with people, who stayed in his study from eleven to six or so everyday and then came down to a dinner party. No wonder I felt resonance. I found another extroverted writer. The other thing that attracted me to him was the way in which he kept growing as he aged. His disdain for racism and inequality was not something he learned from his childhood; he learned from the world he observed, from the way he traveled, from a willingness to not stay the same.

We drove about halfway back from Hartford and stopped in Middletown, a beautiful place along the river, and spent a few hours reading and writing–another gift. I went back to Walking on Water and found these words: “Our story is never written in isolation.”

A continuing joy throughout the day has been the shower of love coming from people all over the place, down through all the layers of my life, reminding me of all the ways I have been supported and shaped, cared for and challenged, held and hoped for at every turn, helping me to figure out what story I have to tell.

Those very connections are the story. As we mark the days until we celebrate the Incarnation with a capital I, my story is full of love made real to me through words and actions across the nearly six decades of my existence. The best thing about aging is an expanding capacity for gratitude. The grief is more profound, yet so is the joy. These are not easy days, but they are shot through with grace because of the handmade love that has shaped my life.

I love to tell this story.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: train of thought

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 11, 2015

1

The fog was so thick on the ride into New Haven this morning I felt like I was on a ghost train. Between Guilford and Branford, the train runs through the marshes and right along the coastline. Most mornings, I can look out across Long Island Sound; today, our carriage was wrapped in the soft white blanket that left us with little to do but trust the tracks. My eyes turned from the fog to the book that has been my traveling companion this week: Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle.

I have been reading Madeleine L’Engle books since I was in fourth grade, beginning with A Wrinkle in Time and continuing on through most of her catalog. A good many of them I have read more than once. She is the person who first got me fascinated with time, so I perked up again when I returned to passages, both familiar and forgotten, that talked about we mark our days and how we think about what has both preceded us and what will follow. I came home with four passages that hung with me all day.

As Ginger and I both approach another Christmas without our fathers, and I think of how many other people I know whose parents have died in the last year, I stopped and read this next paragraph three or four times.

We are not as meant to be as separated as we have become from those who have gone before us and those who will come after. I learned to know and understand my father far more after his death than during his life. Here were are on the border of a tremendous Christian mystery: time is no longer a barrier. (80)

We are taught to think of time as a line, where we walk farther and farther from where we began. In some cultures, they think of it as a circle, where things keep coming round again and again. L’Engle thinks in layers, as though all of the ages we are, have been, and will be somehow stack up on each other. Her images have helped me grasp the Celtic concept of a thin place, where whatever barrier there might be between layers, between us and God, between earth and heaven, become permeable and palpable.

And as I set down the word mediate, I realized that it is part of the word immediate, that place of now, where past and future come together. (84)

As many times as I have seen the word immediate and as many times as I have read Walking on Water, I missed that mediate makes up most of the word, save a prefix. I love her understanding of what that means for immediate, and for our definition of the present tense.

She went on to tell a story of a village who lost track of time when their clockmaker died. Since no one was there to repair the clocks, most abandoned their timepieces. When a new clock maker finally came to town some time later, he announced he could only repair the clocks that had continued to be wound because they were the only ones that remembered how to keep time. L’Engle continues,

So we must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heave, when our bodies are in pain. . . . We may not be able to make our “clock” run correctly, but at least we can keep it wound, so that it will not forget. (96)

Maybe it was her word play with immediate that let me see it, but I realized the word wound means one thing when it’s connected to clocks and another when it describes how we hurt in these days. The daily rituals that keep our clocks wound come out of the wounds with which we live on a daily basis. The grief that has played out over the last two and a half years since Dad died has happened one day at a time. Tomorrow I will mark the end of my fifty-ninth year on the planet and every one of those years happened in days, even in moments, that have stacked up on themselves to create a lifetime—which is not yet over, by the way.

As I sit here tonight, I can think of a number of people whom I love dearly who are hurting deeply. Some have walked wounded for many years. Some have lost traveling companions—spouses, parents, friends, siblings. Some are reeling from pain so fresh that they are hard to reach. I look up and beyond those close to me to find concentric circles of hurt and hopelessness that reach around the globe, and with all of them in mind I offer the last quote, which was one of the first things I read this morning:

We are tempted to try to avoid not only our own suffering, but that of our fellow human beings, the suffering of the world, which is part of our own suffering. But if we draw back from it (and we are free to do so), Kafka remind us that “it may be that this very holding back is the one evil we could have avoided.” (63)

It was dark for the train ride home. Most people sat quietly. One man did chin-ups on the luggage rack from his seat. Another talked on the phone as if he were sitting in his own living room. I read until I got to Branford, then I shut my book and looked out into the night, where the fog had once been, grateful for the love I know that will not let me go.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: thursday

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 10, 2015

4

thursday

it rained enough last night
to let us waken to a
fresh-scrubbed morning
a diamond of a day
offering me the chance
to cook on a Thursday
for the first time since
I left our porch full of
friends who gathered weekly

I was cooking for a group
at church—Ginger invited
all those over seventy
to tea in the parish hall
I cooked and baked in my
new kitchen, made two trips
to the grocery for items
I didn’t have and dropped crumbs
hoping to find my way home

the night has now crept in
the day slipped away without
losing its sparkle, passing its
glow to the candles in the
windows, and I am cleaning
up the kitchen and baking
the last of the cookies to
take to work tomorrow . . .
another tradition I have
carried with me—not to
repeat or recreate, but
to connect all that matters

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: sing to the night

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 9, 2015

3

We got our Christmas tree up today, along with the candles in the windows in good New England fashion. And it’s halfway through Advent. As I was working on things this afternoon, I listened to my friend Billy Crockett’s song “Coasting Into Christmas” and found a helpful and hopeful resonance, which led me to think this might be a night to share some of the songs that feed me through the season. We’ll start with Billy. The song, by the way, is found on this wonderful record, A Very Blue Rock Christmas.

Coasting Into Christmas

coasting into the holiday season
why don’t we drive around and see some lights
buy some eggnog for no good reason
singing carols may be up all night
this year we’ll take it slow
and savor every part
feel the ancient wonder
as it penetrates our heart
but the lines were so long
and the car was so dead
and the mystery thing happened
with the pumpkin bread
and we’ve got extra second cousins coming over
can we find them a bed
and I know this holiday can handle
all things great and small
but I guess we won’t be
coasting into Christmas after all

coasting in with the holiday spirit
I think I’ll sharpen up the turkey knife
but they’re killing each other down at the galleria
but here at our house it is a wonderful life
this will bring the season in with perfect flow
champagne and candlelight
and Mr. Perry Como
but the credit cards maxed
and we still don’t have a tree
and the packages came back
with a postage fee
and grandma’s been detained
by airport security
and they are skating right now
at Rockefeller Plaza as I recall
but I guess we won’t be
coasting into Christmas after all

and just by chance I glance
at these small figures in the round
and think about the story
that’s been so long handed down
how the pregnant girl takes to the road
on a rented donkey with her boyfriend Joe
and there ain’t no inn in Bethlehem
seems to have gotten the memo
now they’re hunkered down exhausted
in some two bit barnyard stall
and they said, I guess we won’t be
coasting into Christmas after all
no I guess we won’t be
coasting into Christmas after all

James Taylor at Christmas gets a good bit of play around here, and the song that seems to have particular meaning this year, in the face of so much xenophobia, is “Some Children See Him.”

Some Children See Him

some children see Him lily white,
the baby Jesus born this night.
some children see Him lily white,
with tresses soft and fair.
some children see Him bronzed and brown,
the Lord of heaven to earth come down.
some children see Him bronzed and brown,
with dark and heavy hair

some children see Him almond-eyed,
this Savior whom we kneel beside.
some children see Him almond-eyed,
with skin of yellow hue.
some children see Him dark as they,
sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray.
some children see him dark as they,
and, ah—they love Him, too

the children in each different place
will see the baby Jesus’ face
like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
and filled with holy light.
o lay aside each earthly thing
and with thy heart as offering,
come worship now the infant King.
’tis love that’s born tonight

If you’ve followed this blog through other Advents, you know one doesn’t pass without me mentioning Patty Griffin and “Mary.”

Mary

Mary, you’re covered in roses you’re covered in ashes
you’re covered in rain
you’re covered in babies, covered in slashes
covered in wilderness, covered in stains
you cast aside the sheet, you cast aside the shroud
of another man, who served the world proud
you greet another son, you lose another one
on some sunny day and always you stay, Mary

Jesus says, “Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer”
he flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
while the angels are singing his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

oh Mary, she moves behind me
she leaves her fingerprints everywhere
every time the snow drifts, every way the sand shifts
even when the night lifts, she’s always there

Jesus says, “Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer”
he flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
while the angels are singing his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Oh Mary, you’re covered in roses
you’re covered in ruins
you’re covered in secrets
you’re covered in treetops, covered in birds
who can sing a million songs without any words
you cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud
of another man, who served the world proud
you greet another son, you lose another one
on some sunny day and always you stay
Mary, Mary

The next song is another repeat performance, this time by Steve Earle.

Nothing But A Child
once upon a time in a far off land
wise men saw a sign and set out across the sand
songs of praise to sing, they traveled day and night
and precious gifts to bring, guided by the light

they chased a brand new star, ever towards the west
across the mountains far, but when they came to rest
they scarce believed their eyes, they’d come so many miles
and this miracle they prized was nothing but a child

and nothing but a child could wash those tears away
or guide a weary world into the light of day
and nothing but a child could help erase those miles
so once again we all can be children for a while

now all around the world, in every little town
every day is heard a precious little sound
and every mother kind and every father proud
looks down in awes to find another chance allowed

and nothing but a child could wash those tears away
or guide a weary world into the light of day
and nothing but a child could help erase those miles
so once again we all can be children for a while
nothing but a little baby
nothing but a child

“The Peace Carol” is a song I first learned from John Denver on his Christmas Special with the Muppets (you can watch the whole thing here). Beth Wood offers a wonderful version that is also a part of A Very Blue Rock Christmas.

The Peace Carol

the garment of life, be it tattered and torn
the cloak of the soldier is withered and worn
but what child is this that was poverty-born
the peace of Christmas Day

the branch that bears the bright holly
the dove that rests in yonder tree
the light that shines for all to see
the peace of Christmas Day

the hope that has slumbered for two thousand years
the promise that silenced a thousand fears
a faith that can hobble an ocean of tears
the peace of Christmas Day

the branch that bears the bright holly
the dove that rests in yonder tree
the light that shines for all to see
the peace of Christmas Day

add all the grief that people may bear
total the strife, the troubles and care
put them in columns and leave them right there
the peace of Christmas Day.

the branch that bears the bright holly
the dove that rests in yonder tree
the light that shines for all to see
the peace of Christmas Day

I’m going to send you off with one more video from James Taylor that doesn’t need lyrics. All you need to do is share the joy.

Peace
Milton

advent journal: finding the words

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 8, 2015

1

I finished a book and started a book today. It was a good day.

The first was Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul by Erika Morrison, which I began reading before we left Durham, packed it by accident, and just got back to it this week. By redefining four words—avant-garde, alchemy, anthropology, and art—she issues a rather vibrant call/invitation to engage God and the world in some fresh and challenging ways. As I reached the final pages, I found myself glad to know she lives in New Haven. I hope we can find some time for conversations that might serve as sequels to my reading.

Morrison reframes anthropology as

a radical way of seeing everyone as if you lived inside their skin and everything else for its full potential. . . . The kingdom anthropologist will always see the stuff of earth as an artery to the kingdom of heaven. The stuff of earth and the stuff of heaven were made for each other. Each gets us to the other. (126)

I love the last sentence in particular. The interconnectedness. And she continues,

The most fundamental premise a kingdom anthropologist holds is this: We are all connected. . . . I start to wonder if most of society lives under the basic assumption that we are all separate, that we are not connected at any level, let alone fundamentally. . . . The anthropologist sees that all people are instrinsically linked not just with one another, but with the entire created order, and seeks to generate a spirit of connection instead of division throughout the land. (153-54)

She then spends some time talking about the food pantry where she and her family volunteer, and she says:

Somehow we all know we’re chained into one another’s lives, stale dreams and broken seams and all. Our individual ships are sinking, but together we manage to stay afloat one more day. (166)

Another last sentence to fall in love with. Knowing I would finish her book on the train to New Haven this morning, I grabbed an old friend off the shelf to read once again: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle. As I started the section on Art in Morrison’s book, she quoted from the L’Engle book that was sharing space in my backpack. I put one down and picked up the other. A chapter or so into reading, I came across a section I have quoted on several occasions without being able to remember exactly where it was:

But I am a story-teller and that involves language. . . . When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too. . . . In time of war language always dwindles, vocabulary is lost; and we live in a century of war. . . . The diminution is world-wide. (37-8)

Then she moves to a powerful warning:

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually. . . . We cannot Name or be Named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles—we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than “the way things are.” (38-9)

Though I love a good hashtag, the combination of war as common circumstance, technology, and social media have caused our expectations and understanding of language to dwindle. One of my favorite episodes in Ken Burns’ The Civil War was the one that contained Sullivan Ballou’s articulate and heart-wrenching letter to his wife. Today his letter might be reduced to “luv u 4ever. #windonyourcheek.”

The awareness that our vocabulary is shrinking even as our world becomes more complex alongside of the challenge to reclaim and reinterpret words we have know a long time has been energizing to me. One of the things that gets lost when our vocabulary is reduced is a way to express the ambiguity and nuance at the heart of what it means to be human. There is more to life, and to most any issue or topic, than two polarized extremes. L’Engle quoted the Spanish philosopher Unamuno:

Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. (32)

My mind is going in a number of different directions with all of this swirling around. The tether between them all goes something like this: the stuff of heaven and the stuff of earth were made for each other—we are all connected—our individual ships are sinking, but together we manage to stay afloat one more day—we cannot Name or be Named without language—and then I ended up at an old Bee Gees song from a record I bought in 1969: its only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.

One of my brother’s maxims is “the one who frames the question wins the argument.” Morrison pointed out that the perspective that we are all connected runs counter to the societal claim that we are different and at odds with each other. Rather than framing life as a conflict fed by the language of exclusion and division, let our chosen words shine a light on all that connects us. Rather than allowing war to be our primary metaphor and fear our chief currency, let us choose words that paint a picture of the world as a giant artists’ colony, exploding with creativity and cooperation. Rather than using words as weapons, let us choose a healing vocabulary.

Come. Let’s find the words.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: finding the grace

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 7, 2015

11

When the worst of my depression hit in the fall of 2001, I quit reading the newspaper. For years my morning ritual was to go from front to back, soaking up as much as I could. As I worked to learn how to live through the darkness visible, one piece of advice I found was to give myself a break from the daily news. I did, and it helped. Before too long, my daily reading was replaced by a daily listening to NPR, which kept a kind tone in its reporting and did more than repeat headlines.

At our house in Durham, I had a radio/CD player that lived under the wall cabinets and gave me the chance to listen everyday. I could tell you the name of pretty much every host for every show on NPR’s playlist. When I installed the radio, I stripped the screws, so it stayed behind when we moved north and I replaced the technology with a portable Bluetooth speaker that allows me to play music from my iPhone. NPR does have a station in iTunes, but I have chosen not to tune in because these days are heavy enough. I have a lot of contact with media in different forms, and I have decided to let the news find me, rather than seeking it out. Find me it does, and I am finding a respite—some room to think and reflect on things other than the standard diet offered by the twenty-four hour news cycle.

I’m not trying to hide from it. I just want some space. We are bombarded with so much that we are expected to somehow be able to respond immediately and move on to the next thing. We hardly had a week to figure out what Ferguson meant before we were on to the next thing. There are ways in which I feel now is the time we should be talking about the implications of what happened in Charleston, but that is ancient history to the news cycle. We will be fortunate if anyone is mentioning any of the recent mass shootings in January or February. The world may be getting smaller, but we are not being offered a global view. We have allowed ourselves to be convinced that we are a nation constantly at war, and that we are the Ones Who Are Right.

In her book The Rise, Sarah Lewis recounts a Yoruba myth of the trickster diety Eshu-Elegba.

Disguised as a man, Eshu-Elegba strolled through town in a cap topped with a crimson parrot feather, half painted white and the other half red, bisected by a line from the middle of his forehead to the top of his spine. Some in the town thought that they saw him walk by in a red cap. Others thought it was white. One person who had swept through the entire town knew that the cap was both colors. Chinua Achebe described the lesson of the myth in reference to an Igbo festival masquerade: “If you want to see well, you must not stand in one place . . . If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace.” (187)

I keep reading Achebe’s words again and again: if you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of grace. If we are hunkered down in fear we won’t find any sense of true perspective.

My current train book is Bandersnatch by Erika Morrison, who happens to live here in New Haven. On the ride in this morning, as she reacquainted me with one of my favorite passages from Frederick Buechner:

If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully—the life you save may be your own—and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world’s sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion. (112)

Most all of Jesus’ words were invitations. He took stuck in people like the woman at the well and let them find the room to move so they could also find the grace they needed. In our time people like Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Franklin Graham are using the language of faith as an incendiary device to frighten people to root themselves in hatred; their invitation is to a graceless existence. I am not making a political point here. We cannot lose these words to war. To paraphrase Indio Montoya, these words don’t mean what they say they mean. Words are not meant to be weapons.

When I started writing tonight, I went looking for the clip from the movie with Indio saying those words. It was, as you can see, quite short. The next clip that began playing almost automatically was one of Mandy Patinkin talking about his favorite lines from the movie and he told a story of seeing the movie many years later and hearing a line in a way he had not before. When they get to the end and the Man in Black is talking with Indio about become the Dread Pirate Roberts, Indio says, “You know, I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over I do not know what to do with the rest of my life.” Patinkin goes on to say he loved the line because the purpose of revenge is “completely worthless and pointless” and the purpose of existence is “to turn the darkness into light.”

I know—from no newspapers to Yoruba legends to Buechner to Indio Montoya: it’s a meandering path. Then again, if we’re rooted to a spot, we miss a lot of the grace. Let us side and far in the name of Love. Finding and sharing the grace. Let’s do that with the rest of our lives.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: this will be our reply

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

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December 6, 2015

6

At our church here in Guilford, Ginger is one of two pastors who share the responsibility of ministering to our congregation, and part of what that means is they alternate preaching from week to week. Today it was Sarah’s turn. The introduction of her sermon reminded me of what the conductor had said at the beginning of the High School Choir and Orchestra Concert on Friday night. Before he said much of anything else, he quoted Leonard Bernstein:

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Both the conductor and Sarah mentioned Bernstein’s remarks came in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I took some time this evening to read this account of that time from Bernstein’s website and learned that he was friends with Kennedy, and found a great supporter of the arts in the President. I also found the paragraph that was the context of the quote:

We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind.

I’ve read it through several times this evening and find deep resonance with the first two sentences, even before I get to the quote. The first one has an odd structure, so it took me a minute to realize he is saying “we are numb with sorrow and rage . . . .” At first I wondered how one could be numb with rage (I understand how grief numbs), and then I realized it is exactly what the weight of violence and war has done to us. Yes, we flame up on Facebook and talk about how to respond, yet we are numbed. Perhaps it is less about not feeling anything and more about feeling numb to the possibility that life could be something other than this. Why, for example, spend the energy on contacting our elected officials in Congress (I can’t bring myself to call them leaders) when they have made it clear they aren’t going to do anything? I struggle to feel hope when I think about them.

Bernstein’s response, however, doesn’t begin with thinking of who else he needed to put into action. He speaks for himself, and for other artists:

But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same.

Then comes the most quoted line:

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Whatever he expected of others and their response, he knew what he would do, which was to double down on his calling, to let there be no discards. His words helped me remember the story of Vedran Smajlović whose response to the four-year Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s was to climb
into the craters left by the bombs and into the shells of the buildings and play his cello. When he was asked why he was doing it he answered,

You ask me am I crazy for playing the cello?
Why do you not ask if they are not crazy for shelling Sarajevo?

What both men are saying involves more than music. Yes, art has transformational power in our lives and we do well to sing back to the night, and there call is also about being true to who we are in the face of violence and fear and grief. The violence may affect us, but it does not get to define us. Our reply will be to do whatever we do more intensely, more beautifully, and more devotedly than ever before.

And I will let Leonard Cohen sing us out.

Anthem

the birds they sang
at the break of day
start again
I heard them say
don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be
ah the wars they will
be fought again
the holy dove
she will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that’s how the light gets in

we asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
yeah the widowhood
of every government
signs for all to see

I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud
but they’ve summoned
they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that’s how the light gets in.

you can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
you can strike up the march,
there is no drum
every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack, a crack in everything
that’s how the light gets in

Peace,
Milton

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