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lenten journal: shame

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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6
lenten journal: shame

Shame.

Since the first day I asked for suggestions for my Lenten Lexicon, I have stopped at this one and wondered what to say.

Shame.

As a noun, its something we feel: humiliation, dishonor. As a verb, it can be something we inflict on someone else: we shame them. Maybe that’s why the word came up for me today. I saw an article by Al Mohler, the President of one of the Southern Baptist seminaries, who has developed a new tactic in his crusade against the LGBT community and equal marriage by referring to their “erotic liberty,” a crass choice of words that reduces humanity to sex acts. He’s attempting to use shame as a weapon.

His article pointed me to another word on the Lexicon List: zealot because it brought to mind a quote from a friend from years gone by when those who made the guy president of the seminary were making their first moves: “Never trust a zealot with a clear conscience.”

What he did in his article reminded me of a white family we knew when we lived in Zambia who were a part of the American diplomatic corps. They had a big German Shepherd named Tammy whom they had trained to be a rather vicious watch dog, or at least to sound like one, because they were frightened of black people. Tammy knew how to do her job. However, when Tammy did something wrong, the woman would bark, “SHAME, TAMMY. SHAME,” and the dog would melt into a puddle of fear and regret. It was horrible to watch. I always felt sorry for the dog.

By coining his phrase “erotic liberty,” he seems to be attempting a similar move, which is a dehumanizing one, and one that won’t work, regardless of what laws get passed or overturned. His words sent me looking for an old Wendell Berry poem that I would offer in response.

Do Not Be Ashamed

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

What I love about Berry’s poem is his call to say, “I am not ashamed.” I will tell my story. I will live my life. I cringed when I read his article because I think of a whole host of people whom I love who could be hurt by his words. And then I remembered their strength, their love, their tenacity, their inward clarity. I thought again of the stories I know of people who have lived lifetimes together, who incarnate love wonderfully. No decree or media-savvy sound bite can bury love, no matter how loudly it is screamed.

John Berger says,

The powerful can’t tell stories: boasts are the opposite of stories, and any story, however mild, has to be fearless; the powerful today live nervously . . . . Stories are one way of sharing the belief that justice is imminent. And for such a belief, children, women, and men will fight at a given moment with astounding ferocity. This is why tyrants fear storytelling: all stories somehow refer to the story of their fall.

His gospel of shame and derision may rally the troops around his castle of self-righteousness for one last stand, but it crumble in the face of the story of Love.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Now that’s a story worth telling.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — Since I linked to Mohler’s article, I feel compelled to link to something more redemptive. Here is a video of Wendell Berry reading “A Poem on Hope” on Moyers and Company.

lenten journal: solace

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4
lenten journal: solace

To say my father was a sports fan is like saying I like to cook. The man would pull over and watch five year olds play football just because it was a game. He became the Sports Chaplain at Baylor because he loved going to the games. I’ve thought a great deal about him today as the conference basketball tournaments are beginning because he watched all of them, right on through the NCAA Championship. This happens to be a time of year when I turn into a sports fan for much the same reason, so we talked to each other a great deal.

One summer several years ago I said, “One of the things I want to do with you is go to the Final Four.” The following February he called and said, “Milton” in this way of saying it that was sort of a stage whisper packed with surprise. Then he said, “I got ‘em.” He had three. The plan was for my brother and I to meet him in Atlanta and we would watch the games. Work schedules for both Miller and I made it where we couldn’t get there until Sunday, so my nephews went up for the semi final game on Saturday and my brother and I flew in later. I arrived to find out that Dad had discovered the Braves’ opening day was that Sunday, so he got us baseball tickets as well.

The story came back close this week because of a poem at the Writer’s Almanac yesterday called “A Drink of Water” by Jeffrey Harrison

When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;
and when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,
wipes the water dripping from his cheek
with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture
my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him
to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,
because I like remembering my brother
when he was young, decades before anything
went wrong, and I like the way my son
becomes a little more my brother for a moment
through this small habit born of a simple need,
which, natural and unprompted, ties them together
across the bounds of death, and across time …
as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds
and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,
my son and brother drinking the same water.

The word that came to mind was solace: to give comfort to in grief or misfortune.

In ways that perhaps only make sense in my head and heart, the word takes from the poem and the memory to a song: Mavis Staples’ “You Are Not Alone.” The song moves me because of its tenacious compassion.

you’re not alone
I’m with you, I’m lonely too
what’s that song
can’t be sung by two?

a broken home, a broken heart
isolated and afraid
open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
you’re not alone

you’re not alone, every night
I stand in your place
every tear on every face
tastes the same

a broken dream, a broken heart
isolated and afraid
open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
you’re not alone

an open hand, an open heart
there’s no need to be afraid
open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
you’re not alone

I wanna get it through to you
you’re not alone
I’m gonna get it through to you
you’re not alone

“Open up this is a raid”—solace with determination.

I suppose I will never get used to not being able to talk to him about March Madness, or him call my name in that particular way. But I am not alone in my grief nor in my solace. I will rest in that thought tonight.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: terror

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: terror

Coming and going from work today I heard stories about the SAE chapter—or, I should say, former SAE chapter—at OU being disbanded because of a video that surfaced showing the members chanting a song that used the n-word and talked about lynching. I have chosen not to watch the video and take the word of the reporters that it was heinous and terrible and, well, evil. It is also a reminder that we do not live in a post-racial society, even if it’s been fifty years since they marched across the bridge in Selma.

I had lunch today with bell hooks’ book once again and it feels as if she is listening to the news even though she wrote the words years ago about race and racism, about “the representation of whiteness in the black imagination.” Her words were illuminating, convicting, haunting and difficult. I pass some of them along here.

I think that one fantasy of whiteness is that the threatening Other is always a terrorist. This projection enables many white people to imagine there is no representation of whiteness as terror, as terrorizing. Yet it is this representation of whiteness in the black imagination, first learned in the narrow confines of poor black rural community, that is sustained by my travels to many different locations. To travel, I must always move through fear, confront terror.

Terror is the word that has stayed with me since. She continues:

Even though I live and move in spaces where I am surrounded by whiteness, there is no comfort that makes the terrorism disappear. All black people in the United States, irrespective of their class status or politics, live with the possibility that they will be terrorized by whiteness.

As much as I wish she were overstating the case, I think how many times I have heard in recent days of another police shooting of “an unarmed black man.” I think about the Supreme Court dismantling the Voting Rights Act, closely followed by state legislatures like ours here in North Carolina who went to work quickly making it more difficult for people of color to vote. And I think about those white students at Oklahoma who gave us a bold reminder that she is telling the truth.

In contemporary American society, white and black people alike believe that racism no longer exists. This erasure, however mythic, diffuses the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination. It allows for assimilation and forgetfulness. The eagerness with which contemporary society does away with racism, replacing this recognition with evocations of pluralism and diversity that further mask reality, is a response to the terror. It has also become a way to perpetuate the terror by providing a cover, a hiding place.

Hiding places like that fraternity house. The actions of those young men beg us to do more than treat them as aberrations. My guess is they didn’t just learn that song over the weekend. They learned it from those who came before them, who now act horrified but feel no differently than the students. That song has been sung before, perhaps long before there were smart phones with cameras.

The NPR story this afternoon talked about the history and status of SAE, mentioning more than once that many of its members had gone on to work on Wall Street. One current member basically said that’s why he joined: it was his ticket to a job in the halls of power and commerce. As I said the other night, all we have to do is look at Congress’ class picture to see white men still run the show and are an image that invokes terror to those who are not white.

What was perhaps most powerful in what I read over lunch was that hooks was not out to blame white people, but to ask us to come to terms with the reality of our collective history. As James Baldwin said, “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” hooks talked about white people “who had shifted locations”—who had moved to see the world differently. She said of one, “Understanding how racism works, he can see the way in which whiteness acts to terrorize without seeing himself as bad, or all white people as bad, and all black people as good.”

The thing I carry away as much as anything is a reminder that white is not normal anymore than being black or brown is different. We who have been born in privilege must shift to a location where we can see we are neither called to nor deserving of our place of power. It is not the job of the rest of the world to learn to do it our way. It is our calling, as those to whom much has been given, to deconstruct the cultural systems,—economic, political, religious—that feed the terror, to incarnate the truth that love casts out fear.

Like I said, her words were illuminating, convicting, haunting and difficult–and true.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: journey

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5
lenten journal: journey

I had some time to read on my lunch hour today, so bell hooks was once again my companion. The essays in her book, belonging: a culture of place, have been challenging, encouraging, and disquieting because she is not willing to be comfortable or individualistic. Today’s essay centered on the distinction between traveling and journeying.

Even the mention of the distinction sent me on a trip back in time to two very specific places. First, was my reading of Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky many years ago. I went back to find the passage that came to mind in which the character drew a distinction between a tourist and a traveler:

He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. . . .[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

hooks likens travel much more to Bowles’ idea of the tourist and offers journey as a word that offers truth beyond what I might find on my path. Here she is quoting James Clifford:

This sense of wordly, “mapped” movement is also why it may be worth holding on to the term “travel,” despite its connotations of middle class “literary” or recreational journeying, spatial practices long associated with male experiences and virtues. “Travel” suggests, at least, profane activity, following public routes and beaten tracks. how do different populations, classes, and genders travel? What kinds of knowledge, stories, and theories do they produce?

(I know this is heady; bear with me. I was moved be what I found today.)

The second place her words took me was back to my days teaching at Winchester High School. Every spring I took my Honors British Literature class into Boston on a field trip called “Scripting the Other.” We had been reading colonial and post-colonial literature and I wanted to find a way to make it stick. The students rotated through three or four different parts of downtown Boston—so we didn’t all clump in one place; they had simple instructions: they were to observe people and pick three they perceived as different from themselves. They had to create some sort of visual representation of each one (if the took a picture, they had to ask permission) and then write an essay for each describing the differences they perceived. The final piece was to write an essay articulating what they learned about themselves by the differences they perceived. (They did the writing when we got back to Winchester.) One of the students titled her piece “Shoe Shopping” and wrote about what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes. She even went back to town to check in on one of the women she met.

I hoped the trip would give them a sense that not everyone shared their view of the world, their advantages, or their opportunities. I also wanted them to see those differences were not necessarily deficiencies or errors; they were not things to be feared, but to be explored; they were, in hooks’ language, different journeys. She says it this way:

Theories of travel produced outside conventional borders might want the journey to become the rubric within which travel, as a starting point for discourse, is associated with different headings—rites of passage, immigration, enforced migration, relocation, enslavement, and homelessness. “Travel” is not a word that can be easily evoked to talk about the Middle Passage, the Trail of Tears, the landing of Chinese immigrants, the forced relocation of Japanese Americans, or the plight of the homeless.

Wait. I have one more stop from the past: Anne Tyler’s novel, The Accidental Tourist. It is the story of Macon Leary who wrote travel books so people could go overseas and still feel like they were at home. The point of travel was to be comfortable and safe.

The point of the journey is to see where the road takes me, to risk something to learn about where I am, to learn who is also on the journey, to remember that my perspective is not the norm or the right one. It is just one of the many stories on the trail.

My story tonight is a swirl of memory and a wish that we knew how to have conversations in this country across perceived differences that didn’t begin with labels or assumptions, but started with walking together and listening. I need to do some shoe shopping of my own.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: light

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
lenten journal: light

Today was Youth and Children’s Sunday at our church, which meant the children were our worship leaders. One of them, who reads quite regularly in worship, stood up to lead us in our call to worship.

Leader: We have seen the light of God
People: on high mountains of celebration and in the laughter of children.
Leader: We have seen the light of God
People: through the shadows of our sadness and fears.
Leader: We have seen the light of God
People: with eyes that have been covered, with eyes that have been opened, with eyes that have been blinded.
All: We have seen the light of God.

Light. When we use the word as a noun we’re talking about what makes things visible, a source of illumination, understanding. (Cue Hank Williams.) When we use the word as a verb it can mean illuminating or igniting. When we use it as an adjective it means of little weight, delicate, or gentle.

We have seen the light of God: illumination, igniting Spirit, lighter load.

Last night Ginger and I went to hear John David Souther sing at Duke. Many of the songs he has written are a part of the soundtrack of my life, thanks to the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt in particular. I saw him a couple of years ago in a much smaller venue in Carrboro and he sang a song I didn’t know that I hoped he would reprise last night, but he didn’t. It’s called “Little Victories.”

when I look up the sky is falling
the signs of warning clearly drawn
ao many of us here are drifting out to sea
keep my head down to go on

little victories
I think you need one
little victories

in my hometown and family circles
they seem unsure and un-empowered
oh, they don’t understand and you can’t help that
though you can love so hard, that never comes back
till you just can’t take it for one more hour

little victories
you need to win one
little victories

I know it hurt sometimes to look around
the sameness of it beats you down
and the best seems all behind
before you start

little victories
you need to win some
little victories of the heart

now as we face our uncertain future
looking on uncharted seas
we see the tear that runs along the curtain
you step right through, you stand with me

little victories
you need to win some
little victories

though it hurt sometimes to look around
blindness only keeps you down
the best may lie beyond this present part
the sky they open, the waters part

little victories
you need to win some
little victories of the heart

The song came to mind because of a response to my post on peace that came through another social media platform. A friend had shared the post and then sent me a note asking if I had seen one of the comments on it. Someone had responded with a great deal of force: “This is a lovely sentiment. But we are faced with enemies who are relentlessly savage and barbaric. Therefore, to attain peace, we must kill them without mercy before they devour the civilized world. Then we can indulge in philosophy.”

It hooked me. I wanted to write back and correct them. I wanted to show them that violence as a response to violence has never proven to be a permanent solution. I wanted to make sure they understood I wasn’t merely philosophizing. I was looking for action. And I did write something like that, but she was undeterred. In the mean time, my friend sent me a message to say the one making the comment had had a parent die only four days before. Though I still didn’t agree with her, I read her words in a different—well—light. I remembered what it felt like in the days immediately after Dad died. One of the things that made anger rise up in me was people saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.” They weren’t doing anything wrong. They meant well. They loved me and were trying to let me know. But the words hooked me. I wanted to say, “He isn’t lost; he’s dead,” not because I needed to correct them (I figured out much later), but because I was still coming to terms with him not being here.

What I came to wish for the person who had written the comment had less to do with understanding my position than it did with finding a way to lighten the load, to share their grief. Since they didn’t even know I was privy to the story, I had no way to respond, other than to take in the illumination, to learn, and to not make any more comments in the thread.

I do wish I could have sent her the song.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: perseverance

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
lenten journal: perseverance

Perseverance: steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

1238006_10201691841354947_127210210_nI woke up this morning thinking about the anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery that took place fifty years ago today. As I imagined what it must have been like to be there that day, and I contemplated once more the actions in states like North Carolina to systematically weaken the Voting Rights Act, the word for today came to mind: perseverance.

I watched an episode of Eyes on the Prize called “Bridge to Freedom” that recounted the lead up to the march and the aftermath. The film footage is unnerving, even frightening to think it took place in America in my lifetime. That the people kept coming back, and stayed committed to the principle of nonviolence, demonstrated their perseverance, their steadfastness.

I went back to find the transcript of Dr. King’s speech at the conclusion of the march. His understanding of how racism and segregation created both a race and a class struggle in our country is insightful and painful. Reading them from the perspective of our time, where economic disparity grows greater and greater, we need to hear them again.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.

Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything. That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

In his speech from the bridge in Selma today, President Obama said:

The Americans who crossed this bridge were not physically imposing. But they gave courage to millions. They held no elected office. But they led a nation. They marched as Americans who had endured hundreds of years of brutal violence, and countless daily indignities – but they didn’t seek special treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century before.

What they did here will reverberate through the ages. Not because the change they won was preordained; not because their victory was complete; but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate.

As we commemorate their achievement, we are well-served to remember that at the time of the marches, many in power condemned rather than praised them. Back then, they were called Communists, half-breeds, outside agitators, sexual and moral degenerates, and worse – everything but the name their parents gave them. Their faith was questioned. Their lives were threatened. Their patriotism was challenged.
And yet, what could be more American than what happened in this place?

What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people – the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many – coming together to shape their country’s course?

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

Rep. John Lewis, who marched with King and the others, introduced President Obama. One hundred members of Congress were in Selma today. One of them—ONE of them—was a member of the Republican leadership. The mostly rich white men who hold elected office in our legislature are fooling themselves if they think the adolescent partisan bickering that takes up most of their time passes for leadership or actually doing their job. The patchwork quilt of talent and ability, of heritage and history that truly makes up our nation looks nothing like the class picture of Congress.

Those of us who are people of privilege must persevere to do whatever we can to understand what it feels like to live without all the things we take for granted. bell hooks says it this way:

Of course, it remains the responsibility of white citizens of this nation to work at unlearning and challenging the patterns fo racist thought and behavior that are still a norm in our society. However, if whites and blacks alike do not remain mindful of the continual heed to contest racial segregation and to work towards a racially integrated society free of white supremacy, then we will never live in beloved community.

That beloved community for which we persevere is a big tent. We have to learn how to listen about race and class and sexual orientation and gender identification and immigration status and whatever else divides us. Listen. Listen. And then listen some more. Then let us look for commonalties, for ways to voice our shared humanity, rather than beating each other with clubs of doctrine or fear. We cannot wait for it to come from the top down. There’s too much money up there. We cannot be discouraged by those who keep throwing legal obstacles in our way. As Dr. King said,

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”
How long? Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.”
How long? Not long:
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Perseverance—or, as we say here on Moral Mondays, forward together, not one step back.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: plight

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: plight

Plight.

I woke up with the word on my mind this morning. It was one of the early submissions when I asked people to give me words for my Lenten journal and it has pulled at me all along the way. I know the word primarily as a noun, as in “we should do something to alleviate the plight of the poor in our state.” In its verb form it means to pledge solemnly or to be engaged to be married. Both carry a sense of a lifetime, though the verb also has a sense of choice, where the noun feels more permanent.

Plight: a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation.

The word carries a note of sadness, even despair in common usage. We don’t, for example, talk about the plight of the rich. We use the word to speak of those who are not us; whom we don’t really know how to help, perhaps; who are outside of our circle of life. Perhaps we use it for the things in life over which we feel we have little control. Circumstances we have to learn to live with. I think of Jesus saying, “The poor you will have with you always.” I don’t think he was saying we just give up and let those in need stay that way. A plight may be difficult; it doesn’t have to be permanent.

I read more of bell hooks over lunch today. The chapter I was reading began with these words:

No doubt every writer of essays has one or two that give them pause, make them think again and again, wondering where did that come from. It is usually impossible to explain to folks who are not writers that ideas, words, the whole essay itself may come from a place of mystery, emerging from the deep deep unconscious surfacing, so that event he writer is awed by what appears. Writing then is revelation. It calls up and stirs up. It illuminates.

Maybe that’s what set me to chasing after plight today—hopes of illumination. My mind has run all over the place. I remember hearing part of a program on The State of Things last week where the person was talking about those whom we call the working poor, but he did more than merely articulate their plight. He said those of us who are people of privilege have to consider how our very lifestyles create oppression, how the standard of living to which we have become accustomed makes low wages and poor opportunities the norm for a large number of people.

bell hooks lives in Berea, Kentucky and teaches at the college of the same name. I learned both from her book and from a woman I met at work whose father graduated from Berea that it has a long history of seeking to change the plight of those who are poor in Appalachia. The school is tuition free and is only open to students whose families make less than $18,000 a year. Before the Civil War it was integrated and coeducational. After slavery ended, the state government forced them to segregate, but spirit of equality remained and prevailed.

hooks spoke of living there this way:

Living in community where many citizens work to end domination in all forms, including racial domination, a central aspect of our local culture is a willingness to be of service, especially to those who are for whatever reason among the disenfranchised. Dominator culture devalues the importance of service. Those of us who work to undo negative hierarchies of power understand the humanizing nature of service, understand that in the act of caregiving and catering we make ourselves vulnerable. And in that place of shared vulnerability there is the possibility of recognition, respect, and mutual partnership.

What drives me to cynicism about much of the national Congress and our state legislature is I don’t think the concept of service ever crosses their minds. They are looking to shore up the hierarchies, to ensconce themselves in the halls of power, and to get reelected. I see little evidence of caregiving, respect, or mutuality. They may be elected officials; they are by no means leaders.

The hope of a better world will not come out of the halls of government. It will come, instead as we make ourselves more vulnerable. If the world feels more dangerous, let us respond by opening the gates, not by building more walls. If we are less sure of how we are going to make it, then let us more first to share rather than hoard. “I was hungry and you fed me,” Jesus said. “Homeless and you took me in.” The plight of the poor is our plight, too. We are all in this together.

When I started thinking about the word plight this morning, I had no idea where it would take me. hooks is right: I’m stirred up. I’ll keep praying for the illumination.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: joy

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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6
lenten journal: joy

This week has been a grey one for me—one in which I have brushed up against my depression. Some of it is weather related, but that’s too easy an attribution. Some of it is grief. Monday marked what would have been my parents’ fifty-ninth wedding anniversary; Tuesday marked nineteen months since Dad died. Some of it I don’t understand, though I have learned to read the signs. Over my years of living with depression, sleep has always been an escape. When I notice I want to sleep even when I have been getting enough rest, that’s a good signal that there’s more going on that needs my attention.

Today the weather matched my feelings. The temperature has been on a downward slide since midnight and some sort of precipitation has been falling all day—particularly when I needed to get out of the car. This afternoon I wandered from one grocery store to another trying to figure out what to serve for Thursday Night Dinner, which is our weekly gathering of friends around our table. I had already looked through what was on my kitchen shelves and what I had in the pantry and what I picked up at the Durham Farmers’ Market last Saturday. Between Whole Foods and Harris Teeter I found a few other things that spurred my imagination. My friend Laura showed up as she does most every Thursday to help cook and we set about creating the menu:

cream of roasted tomato and pepper soup with mini grilled brie and apple sandwiches
roasted Brussels sprouts and pear salad with parsnip-apple-vermouth puree and a balsamic reduction
Guinness braised pork loin with pineapple and apples, roasted beets and beet green-walnut pesto
mini blackberry-strawberry cobbler

The afternoon in the kitchen and our friends around the kitchen helped stare down the greenness; what began as a cloudy day ended as a starry night, at least in our dining room. Sitting with a table full of people I love and who love me, I felt joy.

The dictionary offers joy as a synonym for happiness and misses the point. To sit around our table tonight was not a reprieve for me, or a recess from sadness. I brought my grief to the table and it was fed by joy, by the persistent, tenacious, determined promise that love will be the last word. Joy is not an escape. It is, as the old song says, down in my heart to stay.

I may wake up in the morning to find the sun is still not rising on my horizon and I have several more grey days to wade through. I may find myself wanting to go to sleep to get our from under the weight of these sad times. But the joy given me in the kitchen this afternoon and around the table tonight will not be taken away. The biggest lie of depression is that I am all alone; joy tells the truth—I am loved., I belong.

If you went back through this blog to its beginnings over nine years ago you would find the idea that life and faith are team sports stated over and over again. You might even get a little tired of reading that we are all in this together and that we are loved—really, really loved. The best news I know is we are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. I repeat myself, I suppose because I need to hear it. Too many years of bad theology taught me I was fundamentally flawed, a wretch that needed to be saved. Look at the story again. All of creation came pouring out of the God’s joy. God spoke light and love into being, animated everything the panda to the platypus, and brought us up out of the dust to share the joy of it all.

We are born in love and indelibly marked with joy and hope. The darkness is not a permanent stain. Joy is an indefatigable force, God’s gravitational pull that holds us in the orbit of grace, that draws us together. I know. It pulled me in tonight.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: peace

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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lenten journal: peace

Last week I was supposed to drive up to Raleigh, as Andy and Barney used to say, to speak to the Presbyterian Campus Ministries group at North Carolina State University. I was deterred by freezing precipitation, so I went this week instead. The group meets for a meal and a meeting each Wednesday in the basement of the West Raleigh Presbyterian Church—the congregation that is using my book as their Lenten focus.

I drove in fairly heavy traffic listening to the folks on NPR talk about the contentious case before the Supreme Court, the aftermath of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress yesterday, and something else that made me decide to switch over to the mix CD I had in the car and let the music take me out of the violence and into some hope. I needed a little peace.

I walked into a room of thirty-five students who were laughing and talking in the gathering room, which was littered with second hand couches and pillows. Some of the students were in the kitchen preparing dinner: jambalaya! When the food was ready we moved to the fellowship hall, filled our plates, and then sat down at round tables for the meal. The five students at my table were sophomores, except for one freshman, and charging off into food science, industrial engineering, and art and design.

After we ate we came back into the couch room and four of the students led us in singing. Our hymns were “Desperado” by the Eagles, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White Ts. I turned to the girls sitting next to me and said, “I feel right at home. We sang ‘Desperado’ when I was in college.” I even gave myself permission to cut loose on the last verse when it comes time for the back up singers to wail, “Let somebody love you.”

As they sang to each other about opening the gates of their hearts, they demonstrated their togetherness by the way they treated each other. When I got home tonight I looked back over my lunchtime reading: more of bell hooks, this time quoting M. Scott Peck:

An important aspect of the realism of community deserves mention: humility. While rugged individualism predisposes one to arrogance, the ‘soft’ individualism of community leads to humility. Begin to appreciate each other’s gifts, and you begin to appreciate your own limitations. Witness others share their brokenness, and you will become able to accept your own inadequacy and imperfection. Be fully aware of human variety, and you will recognize the interdependency of humanity.

hooks continues:

Sadly, accepting human variety means that we must also find a way to positively connect with folks who express prejudicial feeling, even hatred. Committed to building community, we are called by a covenant of love to extend fellowship even when we confront rejection. We are not called to make peace with abuse but we are called to be peacemakers.

The dictionary definition of peace points either to moments of quiet and stillness, such as I was seeking on the highway, or to the cessation of violence. What it misses is the active force of peace, as said well in the slogan of the Baptist Peacemakers Fellowship some years ago: peace, like war, is waged. And it is waged together. You’ve got to let somebody love you.

Though we often think of peace in contrast to violence, I wonder if its true opposite is fear. At the heart of prejudice is fear: of the unknown, of change, of loss of significance or power. Those who use their political power to foment discord and despair operate out of the fear of losing their control. Peace—serenity, calm, determination—grows from the power of community, the courage of love. There is no “them,” only Us. The work to be done is not in seeing who to leave out, or how to draw the lines so we always get our way, or how to make sure nothing changes. We are called to be peacemakers: to make sure everyone knows fear is not the last word, to throw open the doors so all have shelter and food, and remember we need each other—every last one of us.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — Here’s a little bedtime music.

lenten journal: connection

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5
lenten journal: connection

One of the things I love about my job as a trainer at the computer store is I get to know people. Mine is the one position in the store that sees repeat customers because they have purchased a one-year membership that allows them to come in as often as they can make appointments. Getting to see them regularly means we get to know a little about each other beyond their questions about their computers, phones, or tablets.

Last year, I got to talking to one of the guys about my book and he responded by pointing me to Matzoh Ball Gumbo, which talks of food and faith from a Jewish and Southern perspective. The next time he came in, he brought me some articles. A few weeks ago, I ran into him at Cocoa Cinnamon—turns out he lives in my neighborhood—and I was telling him about my next book (man, I love saying that), which is about home. He had another recommendation: bell hooks’ belonging: a culture of place.

I knew hooks’ name, he shunning of capital letters, and some of her reputation, but I had no idea what I was in for. The book is her account of and reflection on moving back to rural Kentucky where she grew up—and left. She moved back to come to terms with home. The book is beautiful and hard. Yesterday at work, the man came in for a training session, though not with me. I looked across the table and we exchanged smiles. I had written him an email note to say thanks for his recommendation, but more for his interest and his taking time to connect. When he saw me yesterday he said, “Let’s get together on purpose.”

This morning I had time to read and write. I picked up the hooks book on the way out the door. Near the end of one chapter she said:

As Berry reminds us:

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health – and create profitable diseases and dependencies – by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. (40)

For the second time in a week, Wendell Berry showed up in someone else’s writing—and this time he was talking about the ways in which connections heal us. The last two nights have brought me email notes from the mothers of high school friends from Nairobi days asking to be included in a Lenten Journal email list that predates the blog. Another email came today from the mother of one who was in the youth group in Fort Worth and has stayed a friend ever since. Several months ago I reconnected with someone from Baylor. We had both gone to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1978 with Wallace Daniel, our Russian history professor. It was my graduation present; it was the end of her freshman year. Her name is Elizabeth Crook and she is a writer who lives in Austin. (Here is a link to her latest book.) We have not seen each other since we wandered with our group through Moscow and Leningrad. The more we read of what the other is doing, the more we realize we would have been friends had the geography cooperated. This week, she wrote to say her sister, Noel, who is a poet, would be 
“in conversation” with Naomi Shihab Nye on March 11 at Book People in Austin. (If you’re close enough, go!). I wrote to say Naomi is one of my favorite poets and “a friend who doesn’t know me yet.” I also told Elizabeth that Ginger and I would be in Austin this summer for a wedding. She wrote back to say we had to get together: “I’ve missed you for thirty-six years.”

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. I know Berry was talking about connections to the land, primarily, and we are fed and healed by one another in so many ways. My friend, Billy Crockett, who lives not far from Austin, wrote a song many years ago called “Lines.” The chorus says

lines that run from vine to branches
lines that carry love’s advances
for those who try to find their place in time
there are lines . . .
there are lines

The healing that came in the connections over the last couple of days reminds me that in our most meaningful moments time stands on its head: we are, as Madeleine L’Engle says, every age at the same time. Connections from Africa, Austin, Appleton, and the Apple Store all converging to remind me of the ties that bind and heal.

Yes. A source of delight. Now sing along.

Peace,
Milton

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