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lenten journal: poetry

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
lenten journal: poetry

The woman who wrote the article I talked about yesterday said one of the ways she tried to reach her daughter was to put poems in her shoes because, she said, “What I wanted her to know is: People have been in pain before, struggled to find hope, and look what they’ve done with it.”

As I was going through one of my daily rituals—reading The Writer’s Almanac online (since it is not on our NPR station here)—I realized Garrison Keillor has been stuffing poems in my proverbial shoes for years. More mornings than not I have found something to tuck in the pockets of my heart for when I need it most. This week, I found two keepers. The first is from today: “Three Mornings” by Jane Hirshfield.

In Istanbul, my ears
three mornings heard the early call to prayer.
At fuller light, heard birds then,
water birds and tree birds, birds of migration.
Like three knowledges,
I heard them: incomprehension,
sweetened distance, longing.
When the body dies, where will they go,
those migrant birds and prayer calls,
as heat from sheets when taken from a dryer?
With voices of the ones I loved,
great loves and small loves, train wheels,
crickets, clock-ticks, thunder-where will they,
when in fragrant, tumbled heat they also leave?

When Ginger had her sabbatical in 2006, we spent time in Greece and Turkey tracing the steps of the apostle Paul. We spent three or four days in Istanbul ourselves and were moved by the calls to prayer that came from every direction. The voices were strong and beautiful. As we were captured by the singing, we were also struck by how few people stopped to listen. Life went on as the melodies wafted over us. We stopped wherever we were to take it all in. I wrote about our experience in an earlier blog post:

While we sat at our sidewalk table, the calls to prayer began and, as with every other time we have had a chance to watch people respond, no one stopped or changed what they were doing to pray or even acknowledge the calls were going out. The haunting chants appear to be little more than white noise. Yet, another surprise, I suppose, and a disappointing one. Is it so easy to fill our lives with noise that God’s voice becomes just another in the cacophonous chorus? (Did that really need to be a question?)

We decided to start back to the streets around our hotel, which are in a little bit more economical section and inhabited by both Turks and tourists living on a budget. We bought things in two shops where the shopkeepers were not hard sellers and the prices were fair (another surprise) and ended up for dinner at Doy Doy (another Lonely Planet suggestion and two blocks from our hotel) where we both ate for less than what it cost to feed one of us at lunch. By the time we finished dinner and began walking home, the calls to prayer were pealing out once more. Gulden (our guide) talked about the origin of the prayers five times a day, accompanied by ritual cleansing and body positions as one prays, coming out of life in the desert. The washing of the hands, feet, head, ears, and neck three times before praying would have refreshed the desert traveler; the prayer positions would have served as stretching exercises: the practice of prayer was a way to stay healthy in more ways than one. Here, far away from the desert, few seemed willing to stretch their muscles, both physical and spiritual.

Poetry, like prayer, is exercise for the heart. The words stretch us, nourish us, push us, challenge us, comfort us, and call us to see beyond the little frontiers of our daily existence. Here’s another poem Garrison left a couple of days ago: “Dawn Revisited”
by Rita Dove.

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.

“Imagine you wake up with a second chance”—what better invocation and invitation into whatever life holds for tomorrow or any other day, and a call to relish the poems and prayers that find us and remind us that people have been in pain before and found hope in the struggle. We are not alone.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: patience

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
lenten journal: patience

My friend Paul pointed me to an article in the New York Times that has stuck with me for several days now titled “Bringing a Daughter Back From the Brink With Poetry.” The author told a simple story of how she worked to reach out to her teenage daughter as she was going through a particularly difficult time. She had me from the opening lines:

When George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, my 13-year-old daughter, Marisa, was so angry that she stopped wearing shoes.

She chose the most ineffective rebellion imaginable: two little bare feet against the world. She declared that she wouldn’t wear shoes again until we had a new president.

I had learned early in motherhood that it’s not worth fighting with your children about clothes, so I watched silently as she strode off barefoot each morning, walking down the long gravel driveway in the cold, rainy darkness to wait for the bus.

The principal called me a few times, declaring that Marisa had to start wearing shoes or she would be suspended. I passed the messages on, but my daughter continued her barefoot march.

I spent a fair amount of time tonight looking for the word that matches best with what pulls me in the mother’s story. I was moved by the mother’s kindness towards her daughter, her trust, and her support, but the word that resonated most was patience.

Patience: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.

I’ve tried to picture what it must have felt like as a parent to watch your child walk barefoot down the driveway on a cold morning and being able to give her space to figure it out on her own. Because the mother was able to accept the suffering of both her daughter and herself, she was also able to create space for her daughter work through it and to foster trust between them.

When I lose patience it often has to do with my choosing to force my schedule or my agenda on whatever is happening around me. When I taught high school in Massachusetts, one of the boys in tenth grade English was this big Labrador of a kid who came bounding in everyday full of energy that was no particularly focused. He would often ask, “Mr. B-C, may I stand on my head?” Our classes were full and passing periods were short. I had a lot of material to cover. His request was not particularly convenient, yet somewhere in the midst of it I had the wherewithal to answer, “OK—just till the tardy bell rings.” He put his books on his desk and then stood on his head with his back up against the wall. When the bell rang, he sat down and we went on with class.

He sat next to another boy who was depressed and angry. More than once, he refused to do assignments and was bitter or even rude in response to attempts I made to reach out to him. My headstander would say, “That’s okay, Mr. B-C, I’ll help him.” His patience with his friend was hopeful and healing. I saw them one day at lunch their senior year. Both had grown beyond what I had known of them in class. I said to the depressed one, “When you were in my class I really worried about you. I think if it were not for your friend and the way he cared about you, I’m not sure you’d be here.”

“I think you’re right,” he said and smiled. We all smiled.

Patience knows there are no shortcuts. If we are to accept the delay or trouble or suffering, then we must choose to take the long way home: to walk through the valley of the shadow and not take the shortcut of safety; we must wait for the moment of awareness or discovery rather than forcing the shortcut of explanation or instruction.

The mother in the article took to leaving poems in her daughter’s shoes once she started wearing them again as a statement of solidarity. One of the poems was Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” part of which says,

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Patience is connected to other words that matter: wait, listen, trust, hope, relax, rest, love. It is less of a concept or an idea and more of a visceral and incarnational truth. We live it out the same way the mother let her daughter carry on her barefoot protest rather than siding with the principal. Patience is looking for a way to say, “I am on your side and I will take as long as it takes to make sure you know that.” It is, as Ginger often says, learning to look for the emotion behind the behavior. It is assuming positive intent rather than jumping to conclusions. And it is our calling in everything from family relationships to church committee meetings to board rooms and classrooms to job sites to grocery store check out lines—any place we can offer compassion rather than demand compliance or conformity.

Patience, like poetry, can bring us back from the brink.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: adventure

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
lenten journal: adventure

I am writing late tonight because I have been at a wedding.

The daughter of church friends got married this evening. Several weeks ago, they contacted me about baking pies for the wedding. They didn’t want a cake. Instead they wanted individual mini pies—equal amounts of key lime and chocolate chess. We came up with the idea of using small mason jars for the key lime pies and I baked the chess pies in muffin tins. Yesterday I baked one hundred and ten pies. Here they are before the wedding crowd hit the dessert table.pies

The ceremony was unusual and meaningful. The couple had worked with the minister, who was the bride’s uncle, to create a special moment. They invited us on a metaphorical journey from

darkness to
light to
awareness to
love to
relationship to
maarriage.

At each step along the way they had quotes and poems and a vow they made to each other, building to their exchange of rings and pronouncement. When the minister said they were husband and wife, the bride bounced in anticipation of their kiss. It was a beautiful moment.

Early on in the ceremony as he talked about darkness, the minister said, “What is dark is not empty—if you know how to see there is mystery. It was then I thought of my word for today:

adventure: daring and exciting activity calling for enterprise and enthusiasm.

His sentence took me back to the words of Chuck Raymo, who used to write a science column for the Boston Globe and has several books about seeing in the dark as an astronomer. Raymo says once he learned how many stars there were in the sky he wondered how there could be any darkness. Then it hit him: the light just hasn’t gotten here yet.

Annie Dillard says if you want to see the stars you have to go sit in the dark. If you know how to see there is mystery.

Tomorrow is the beginning of March. When April comes, Ginger and I will celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. I think back to April 21, 1990 and see we had little idea of what our life together would hold. We knew we were moving to Boston, but not much was defined beyond that, other than we knew we were going together into whatever mystery there might be. Durham was nowhere on the radar.

I think about our quarter century and I want to go back and supplement the sentence I heard tonight. It’s not just about thinking the dark is empty; we can feel that way about the daylight as well, about the everydayness of existence: when the morning light comes streaming in, we get up and do it again. Amen. In both daylight and dark, we need to know how to see if we are going to engage the mystery. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only those who see take off their shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

We don’t have to be in faraway places or doing exotic things to find adventure. The dailiness of existence calls for enterprise and enthusiasm if we are to see the mystery. If we are to live life together our eyes and our hearts must be open everyday as we carry our griefs, share our joy, and catch each other by surprise.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: content

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: content

Content.

How you pronounce the word in your head as you read will determine the definition you infer.

con-TENT
in a state of peaceful happiness.
satisfied with a certain level of achievement, good fortune, etc., and not wishing for more.

CON-tent
the things that are held or included in something.
the amount of a particular constituent occurring in a substance.

In my brief word study, I learned they both come from the same medieval Latin root word, continere, which breaks down into “to hold together.” To be content with life, then, is to have some sense of the things it holds that matter and, perhaps, some sense of what we have to learn to accept. The last part of that sentence reminds me of one of my father’s maxims: you have to learn the difference between a problem and a predicament. A problem is something you can solve; a predicament is something you have to learn to live with.

In both churches where Terry and I played and sang together over the last couple of weeks, I had people come up and tell me how perfectly the song fit my voice. It felt good singing it—but here’s the deal: it was lower than I am used to singing. I have been a tenor all of my life. I find great joy in singing the high harmony parts. I hear those parts first in both my head and my heart. I like the air up there. I sang the song in D because the song was called “Prayer in Open D” and discovered I a new home for my voice. My tenor days may be numbered. I will have to learn to be content with being a baritone, have to learn to listen for new harmony lines and let someone else take to the skies. It is not a drastic change, but it calls me to change how I think about me and how I relate to the world. If my voice is moving down the scale, how do I do the work to find my voice and, as the definition says, not wish for more?

When I first started my Clinical Pastoral Education training at Baylor Medical Center in the fall of 1981, there was a little boy on the oncology ward who had bone cancer in his right arm, which was his dominant arm. The day they told him they were going to have to amputate his arm he began eating with his left hand. He saw how life was going to be—the predicament at hand—and he began to learn to live with it. The adjustments in my life pale by comparison, but the spirit of his approach to life is worth emulating.

Writing that sentence brings me face to face with the difference between contentment and resignation. To be content—to not wish for more—is not to say, “I guess this is all there is.” Resignation seems laced with despair; to be content is to be shot trough with gratitude. To go back to the song, to sing a different part is still to sing harmony; to change the key is to sing it where it fits my voice. What matters most of all is to keep singing.

One of the hymns of my heart is James Taylor’s “Secret O’ Life.” The first two verses say

the secret of life
is enjoying the passage of time.
any fool can do it,
there ain’t nothing to it.
nobody knows how we got
to the top of the hill.
but since we’re on our way down,
we might as well enjoy the ride.

the secret of love
is in opening up your heart.
it’s okay to feel afraid,
but don’t let that stand in your way.
’cause anyone knows
that love is the only road.
and since we’re only here for a while,
might as well show some style.
give us a smile.

isn’t it a lovely ride?
sliding down, gliding down,
try not to try too hard,
it’s just a lovely ride.

Sing along, my friends. This is as good as it gets.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: enough

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
lenten journal: enough

It’s Thursday, which means I spent a good part of my day getting ready for Thursday Night Dinner, our weekly gathering with friends and whoever else shows up to share the meal. Tonight it was all “regulars,” if you will—friends who come most every week and who help make both our house and our town feel like home.

Most weeks, I start thinking of or looking for menu ideas on Monday or Tuesday. This week, I stood in line at the grocery store after work yesterday because a snow storm was predicted and I knew I needed to get groceries if I was going to be ready to feed our friends. I had a couple of things in mind, but I mostly grabbed items that caught my attention and gave myself room to figure out what to do with them when I got to the house.

Though cooking is always an enjoyable adventure for me, some days things happen more easily than others. There are the days when things just fall into place and then there are those—like tonight—when you have to work hard and keep adapting to make the meal happen. Like Guy Clark sings in “Someday the Song Writes You,”

searching for a melody
to sing my soul to sleep
reaching for some harmony
down inside of me
somedays you know just how it goes
somedays you have no clue
somedays you write the song
somedays the song writes you.

The meal turned out well. We had a wonderful time around the table. Everyone had stories to tell from the week, which led to stories from other parts of our lives, which led to our knowing each other better and the bonds between us being stronger when we got up from the table to go out into the week ahead. All of it was good and the meal was not what I had hoped. I made some mistakes, had to leave what was going to be a key ingredient out of one dish and settle for things to not be exactly right on another. Let me be more specific: I thought I was putting some beautifully roasted parsnips in the oven to stay warm, but the oven was on 400° and I pulled them out to find a sheet pan full of charcoal. To rephrase Clark’s analogy, I felt like I didn’t cook the meal, the meal cooked me—or I can move to a different vantage point and see we had a wonderful meal together tonight, even without the dishes I had imagined, and let that be enough.

Enough: the amount or number needed, desired, or allowed; sufficiency.
Sufficiency: an adequate amount of something, especially of something essential.

When people find out I have worked as a chef, they often ask my favorite dish. The answer I give most often is, “I like to cook whatever will make you stay at the table and talk.” We sat down tonight at seven and got up around ten. All we had to do with the plates was rinse them and put them in the dishwasher; people ate everything. And, as I said, we fed each other well with our stories. Tonight I got to cook my favorite meal, even without the parsnips. I’m going to let that be enough.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: liberal

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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8
lenten journal: liberal

Liberal.

It’s a word that most certainly elicits a response. In the media, it’s a lightning rod. In the dictionary, it means generous and open-minded. I’ve been thinking about the word for a couple of days now after having read an article about a professor at my alma mater who was calling for those in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) who called themselves “moderate” to admit they were “liberal”—and not in a good way.

For those of you who don’t know your recent Baptist history, the CBF began when the Southern Baptist Convention fractured in a political/theological struggle that began while I was in seminary. The divisions were as deep as the wounds, and both have continued down the years, alongside some healing as well. The CBF did not set out to be another denomination, and so a broad range of churches have been connected, particularly around mission endeavors, which means the theological spectrum among them is fairly diverse. In discussing his concerns about that diversity the professor said,

However, I am a conservative among the moderates in the CBF and urge those moderate Baptists who are really liberal, in the historical sense, to drop the label moderate and just call themselves liberals. When they agree with Marcus Borg’s theology, for example, they are liberal, not moderate.

The last sentence is the one that got me because Marcus Borg, who recently died, has been on of the people who has feed my life of faith. I remember reading Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time and thinking the difference between us was where we grew up and what questions we were taught to ask. More than anything else, I came away with a sense of resonance. I trusted him as he professed his faith, even when it was not in the way I professed mine. The second book of his I read was The Heart of Christianity, which remains one of my favorite books, period. In it he talked about the church in North America having both an existing paradigm and an emerging paradigm. He was clear to say from the beginning that he was not trying to create a dichotomy as much as describe these two genuine expressions of faith as it gets lived out in the church existing alongside of each other.

When Ginger and I found our way to the UCC, we felt at home. The congregational church polity was a structure we understood and appreciated and it was coupled with a faith that trusted that “God was still speaking,” leaning back to the words of some of the first American Christians who believed in all that had been handed down and that “there was more light yet to break forth.”

One of my friends describes the UCC by saying, “If Christianity were a neighborhood, we’d be the last house on the left.” The liberals. The progressives. The people of extravagant welcome. It’s a good house in a good neighborhood.

The article left me feeling as though the professor saw liberal Christianity as a watered down version of the Real Thing, that those who had liberal leanings needed to admit they weren’t really the church. For me, being liberal means taking equality and inclusiveness seriously, making sure that all God’s people know they are wanted, in the same way that Jesus called us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Being liberal means understanding the heart of the gospel has to do with how we treat the poor and marginalized in our society. That’s right: the gospel is about social justice, in the same way Jesus said he had come to proclaim liberty to the captives. In the history of the denominations that now make up the UCC, we ordained an African-American man to pastor a predominantly white congregation before the Civil War, began ordaining women to ministry sixty years before they could vote, and ordained the first openly gay pastor in 1970. Liberal Christians have done much to further the gospel of Christ in our world, alongside of brothers and sisters up and down the theological continuum.

We have much to learn from each other. We are called to be in this together. We do our best work when we look for resonance rather than lean into labels. Yes, we have our differences, but let us choose not to let those define us and lead with invitations rather than instructions.

in Christ there is no East or West,
in him no South or North,
but one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide earth

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: lament

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
lenten journal: lament

The last two Sundays I have had the privilege of playing music in church with my friend Terry, who is one of the best harmonica players I have ever heard. Soon after we moved to Durham I was asked to sing at the sixtieth birthday party of one of our church members. I sang “Angel From Montgomery” and asked Terry if he would play along. We have been playing together off and on ever since. We even have a name for ourselves: Oysters on the Half Shell. We are, as we like to say, raw and delicious.

The song we did Sunday is one that speaks to me and one I have always thought would be a good hymn for Lent because it is truly a song of lament. I haven’t sung it before because I never think of it until Lent is already here; this year I was ahead of the curve. The song is Emmylou Harris’ “Prayer in Open D.”

there’s a valley of sorrow in my soul
where every night I hear the thunder roll
like the sound of a distant gun
over all the damage I have done
and the shadows filling up this land
are the ones I built with my own hand
there is no comfort from the cold
of this valley of sorrow in my soul

there’s a river of darkness in my blood
and through every vein I feel the flood
I can find no bridge for me to cross
no way to bring back what is lost
into the night it soon will sweep
down where all my grievances I keep
but it won’t wash away the years
or one single hard and bitter tear

and the rock of ages I have known
is a weariness down in the bone
I use to ride it like a rolling stone
now I just carry it alone

there’s a highway rising from my dreams
deep in the heart I know it gleams
for I have seen it stretching wide
clear across to the other side
beyond the river and the flood
and the valley where for so long I’ve stood
with the rock of ages in my bones
someday I know it will lead me home

I’m grateful to Mike at West Raleigh Presbyterian Church because he recorded us Sunday. (You will notice we left out the bridge so Terry could play a harmonica solo.)

Lament:

  • a passionate expression of grief or sorrow;
  • a song, piece of music, or poem expressing sorrow;
  • an expression of regret or disappointment; a complaint.

There’s a fair amount of scripture and song devoted to lamenting. Grief is at the heart of our faith—a reminder that hope and optimism are not synonyms. We are people of constant sorrow, so it is good to give voice to what and who has been lost, to sing to the night together, even as we remember we are walking towards the resurrection.

The amazing thing about this song is it names “the damage I have done,” which also reminds me grace is at the heart of our faith. If life were simply a matter of getting what I deserved, none of us would fare well. I know of the persistent resilience of God’s love because of those who have weathered the storms I have created, who have picked up the pieces of what I have broken, and continue to love me.

Sunday during the time with the children I told them when I thought of songs I wanted to sing I tried to pick ones that would sound good with harmonica just so I could hear Terry play. I love to play and sing, but there’s another level of wonder when he is standing next to me with his harp, which leads me to believe that laments are probably best sung as choral pieces, or at least in duos and trios. Singing of sorrow all by yourself will kill you. Another voice in the night is the first assurance that all is not lost, we are not alone; the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: linger

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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8
lenten journal: linger

When I sent out the call for words that might be a part of my Lenten Lexicon, my friend Beth sent the word “linger.” I love the word. The online dictionary gave three definitions:

stay in a place longer than necessary;
spend a long time over (something);

be slow to disappear or die.

Since last night I have stayed longer with and spent a long time over a song that found me many years ago. When I lived in Fort Worth I spent almost as much time perusing the record and CD bins at Sound Warehouse as I did at my own place. New music came out every Tuesday, so I usually dropped by on my way home from work to see what had arrived. On August 22, 1989 I found two records that have been a part of the soundtrack of my life ever since: Shawn Colvin’s Steady On and David Wilcox’s, which may be the best title for a first record ever.

The last track on the Wilcox record is a song called “The Kid.” From the first time I heard it I was captured by the longing, hope, adventure, and sadness in the song. There’s a burning inside when I listen to it, a sense that some ships have sailed and yet there are others still to come. I’m not done just yet.

I’m the kid who ran away with the circus
now I’m watering elephants
but I sometimes lie awake in the sawdust
dreaming I’m in a suit of light
late at night in the empty big top
I’m all alone on the high wire
look he’s working without a net this time
he’s a real death defy-er

I’m the kid who always looked out the window
failing tests in geography
but I’ve seen things far beyond just the schoolyard
distant shores of exotic lands
they’re the spires of the Turkish Empire’s
six months since we made landfall
riding low with the spice of India
through Gibraltar, we’re rich men all

I’m the kid who thought we’d someday be lovers
always held out that time would tell
time was talking, I guess I just wasn’t listening
no surprise, if you know me well
as we’re walking toward the train station
there’s a whispering rainfall
across the boulevard, you slip your hand in mine
in the distance the train calls

I’m the kid who has this habit of dreaming
sometimes gets me in trouble too
but the truth is, I could no more stop dreaming
than I could make them all come true

Who knows how many times I’ve listened to the song over the years and sung along, particularly when it comes to sailing around Gibraltar. I love the image of passing the rock with such a sense of triumph. And I love the whole idea of saying, “Remember the kid who sat staring out the window?— that’s me”—much like the kid in Guy Clark’s “The Cape” (which I have referenced more than once on this blog):

old and grey with a flour sack cape tied all around his head
still climbing up on the garage and will be till he’s dead
everyone around him said he’s acting like a kid
he did not know he could not fly and so he did

Sound Warehouse may not be here any more, but iTunes has a feature that says something like “customers who listened to this also bought . . .” that is as close to being a digital equivalent to digging through record store bins as they can get. One of the names that popped up under someone I was listening to was Buddy Mondlock, who happens to be the one who wrote “The Kid” all those many years ago. I found his version and was surprised to find a verse I had not heard before—and that doesn’t show up on anyone’s lyric sheet, including Buddy’s website. It came right after the verse about the circus.

I’m just the kid who fell asleep at the movies
snoring right through the final scene
that’s okay ‘cause I was right there with Bogey
side by side in the pouring rain
it’s our last chance to make a getaway
but it looks like I’m bleeding
take them with you I’ll hold them off
they won’t get by me while I’m breathing  . . .

I would love to know what made him quit singing it. He doesn’t say a word about it on his website, but he does mention that he co-wrote a song called “The Dark” with the aforementioned Guy Clark, and it’s another one I love, which turned my lingering into meandering.

in the dark you can sometimes hear your own heart beat
or the heart of the one next to you
the house settles down after holding itself up all day
shoulder slumps, gives a big sigh
you hear no one’s foot fall in the hall
that drip in the kitchen sink marking time
june bug on the window screen can’t get in but he keeps on trying
one way or another we’re all in the dark

fireflies, sparks, lightning, stars
campfires, the moon, headlights on cars
the northern lights and the milky way
you can’t see that stuff in the day
when the earth turns its back on the sun
the stars come out and the planets start to run around
now they call that day is done
but really it’s just getting started
some folks take comfort in that

and how dark is it
it’s too dark for goblins
and how dark is it
it’s so dark you can smell the moon
how dark is it
it’s so dark the wind gets lost
how dark is it
it’s so dark the sky’s on fire
how dark is it
it’s so dark you can see Fort Worth from here

Tonight, thanks to a song that has lingered in my life and found me again, I can see Fort Worth from here—all the way back to the record store and a CD I found ten days after Ginger and I became engaged. Now less than two months from our twenty-fifth anniversary I am grateful she has lingered with me and the dreams still keep coming.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: blessing

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4
lenten journal: blessing

I preached today at West Raleigh Presbyterian Church. My friend Lori Pistor is the Interim Pastor there. Those good people are reading my book for Lent and invited me to help kick things off. It was a wonderful day. Here’s what I had to say.

“Blessed From the Beginning”
A Sermon for West Raleigh Presbyterian Church
Mark 1:1-15
February 22, 2015

I’d like to start this morning with a question much like I asked the children earlier: what comes to mind when I say the word blessing? You don’t have to answer out loud; just hold the question for a moment . . . .

The dictionary says the word has to do with “God’s favor,” with “making something holy,” “to call on God to protect,” and, of course, “the prayer said before meals.” All of those are true and I think there is something missing in those definitions that is a vital part of the way we find our places in this world. Blessing someone is a way of saying, “you are good, “you are worthy,” “you are enough.” It’s a way of reminding one another we are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved.

We are all looking for a blessing.

As I started thinking about what it means to give and receive a blessing, my mind went first to the Seinfeld episode about Festivus, Kramer’s alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah. Some of you may remember. George’s father latched on to the holiday and everyone showed up for the celebratory feast. After dinner, Mr. Constanza said, “And now it’s time for the Airing of Grievances, which is when I go around the table and tell everyone of you how you have personally disappointed me this year.”

Blessing would be at the other end of the continuum, as in the words Jesus heard during his baptism: “This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” Blessing.

Both our passages deal with water, wilderness, and blessing this morning. After forty days of rain, and then all the time it took for the water to recede, Noah and his family let the animals out of the arc and saw the rainbow—God’s sign of covenant and blessing.

Jesus came to the Jordan to find John, who was baptizing people as a ritual of forgiveness and reconciliation, preparing them for the coming Messiah. In the other gospel accounts, John was puzzled that Jesus came to be baptized. What Jesus came for was the blessing: you are my beloved child . . . .

Both blessings come in the midst of barrenness, of wilderness, and both are followed by times of trial and difficulty. Blessing is not simply a free pass or a sign of favoritism; it is a mark, a claim on our lives: you are mine and I love who you are. For Noah it was the beginning of building a new world. For Jesus, it was the beginning of his ministry. From the moment God imagined us into existence, we are loved. We begin with a blessing and, much like our stories today, it is followed by trial and difficulty.

Here is one of the ways in which Christian community is essential: we have the power to bless one another, to remind one another of forgotten blessings, or perhaps to offer the first blessing someone has ever really heard. Let me give you an example.

When I was in tenth grade, my family moved to Fort Worth, Texas. My parents were missionaries and we had lived in Africa. We were on a year’s leave and went back to Texas where our families were. I was fifteen, five-two, and I felt round and out of place. I can remember sitting on the edge of the bed in the room of the rent house and looking in the mirror and wishing I could be someone else—anyone else.

The youth minister at the church we attended was a man named Steve Cloud. He was everything I was not: tall, handsome, athletic. We had a Wednesday evening youth gathering at the church, so after school I would walk from the high school to the church and hang out until time for youth group. One afternoon he said, “Flash—which was his nickname for me—let’s go shoot some baskets.” We went out on the church parking lot where someone had nailed a backboard to one of the light poles. I shot and missed everything. The ball rolled across the parking lot away from us and I said, “You go get it” with a less than kind tone.

He chased down the ball and came walking back toward me. “Let’s go back inside,” he said. As we crossed the parking lot, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Flash, one day Trish and I are going to have kids, and when we do, I hope they turn out exactly like you.”

Blessing. I think I made it through high school on his words. And yet, if I could find Steve today my guess is he would not remember that story. He was not trying to create a life-changing moment; he was simply being attentive and being himself and working to find a way to let me know I was loved. It worked.

The opening line of Mark’s gospel reads, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I had always thought it was simply the opening sentence: here’s the beginning and he went on to describe John’s arrival and Jesus’ baptism. One Sunday many years ago I heard a sermon by a colleague named Skip Waterbury who said that first line was not an opening sentence but a title: the entire account of Jesus’ life was the beginning of the gospel; we are the continuation of that story. As Jesus went through life looking for ways to offer healing words and touches, so are we to heal. As Jesus proclaimed the good news to those flung to the edges by the centrifugal force of life, so are we to tell the good news. As Jesus blessed those who had been told for far too long that they were not good enough, that they didn’t belong, that they were sinful because of who they were, so are we to bless. We—the Body of Christ—are the incarnation of God’s love in these days. The gospel story continues in what we do and say.

One of the people who keeps reminding me I am loved is my friend Burt Burleson. We have known each other since college days. Several years ago, when he was pastoring a church, he called one day and said, “I need a poem for Sunday about blessing,” and I wrote one and sent it to him based on an experience I had sitting in Boston traffic one afternoon. It’s called “Daily Work.”

The crush of afternoon traffic finds me
in an unending stream of souls staring
at the stoplight. From my seat I can see
the billboard: “Come visit the New Planetarium
You Tiny Insignificant Speck in the Universe.”

When the signal changes, I follow the flow
over river and railroad yard, coming
to rest in front of our row house, to be
welcomed by our schnauzers, the only
ones who appear to notice my return.

I have been hard at work in my stream
of consciousness, but the ripples of my life
have stopped no wars, have saved no lives —
and I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning;
I am a speck who has been found wanting.

I walk the dogs down to the river and wonder
how many times I have stood at the edge
hoping to hear, “You are My Beloved Child.”
Instead, I skip across life’s surface to find
I am not The One You Were Looking For.

I am standing in the river of humanity
between the banks of Blessing and Despair,
with the sinking feeling that messiahs
matter most: I am supposed to change
the world and I have not done my job.

Yet–if I stack up the stones of my life
like an altar, I can find myself in the legacy
of Love somewhere between star and sea:
I am a Speck of Some Significance.
So say the schnauzers every time I come home.

The story of creation begins with God saying, “That’s good.” The story continues in the life of Jesus with God saying, “You are mine and I am pleased.” Here today, the story continues calling us to find every way we can to let one another know we are loved, we are really, really loved. May we take every chance we get to bless one another. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: why

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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lenten journal: why

In my days years ago as a hospital chaplain, I spent a lot of time working around the word why. In the context of illness and terminal diagnoses, the word was neither helpful nor hopeful. Why did I get cancer? Why is my father dead? Any answer comes up lacking because it seems to fall toward either blame or platitude. I didn’t know what to do with the word why.

Somewhere along the way in my first year of Clinical Pastoral Education, one of my supervisors offered something that helped: instead of asking why, he said, we do better to ask, “What does this mean for my life?” Instead of dwelling on the cause, look to the consequence, or even the possibilities. As someone in my early twenties who was not particularly acquainted with grief, the idea gave me language that helped me connect with people in the midst of pain I didn’t understand. Down the years since, I have still found it helpful to ask, “What does this mean for me?”

During my first year at the hospital, I met a woman who was dealing with a recurrence of breast cancer. She was thirty-two. Over the next couple of years, she was in and out of the hospital. I was assigned to the oncology floor and so I got to know her and her husband; they told me stories of their two children who were five and seven. The treatments were not successful and she died at thirty-five. She made meaning to the very end. One Friday morning as I visited, she asked if I would come by at the end of the day, which I did. We both knew she was in her last days. She wanted to say goodbye and was intentional about asking several of the staff she knew well to come and see her. As we talked she said, “I found out I had cancer my sophomore year in college and I had to drop out for a year to go through treatment. It was during my last year at school I met my husband. I’d do it all again if it meant I got to be with him.” That’s what it meant to her. At the end of our time she said, “I may not be here when you come back on Monday. Thank you and goodbye.” Early Sunday evening her husband called to tell me she had died.

I don’t know why.

A few months ago, I first learned of a TED Talk given in 2009 by a man named Simon Sinek. He is a business person and thinker and pretty interesting person. The talk grabbed me because he did something different with the word why. He made it something worth asking. His thesis is our “why” is at the core of who we are: our passion, our story, our purpose or cause for doing what we do. From the why comes the how—how we do what we do, and then the what—what we do or what we make. If we want to connect with others, if we want others to share our passion, we must connect them with the why or else they won’t get it.

The word why is not the problem—it’s how we use the word that makes the difference. “Why am I here?” is another way of asking “What is my purpose? What moves me to act? How can I make a difference? What does it mean to be me?” When we share our whys—what we believe, who we feel called to be—we offer invitations to relationship, to connection, to community. Sinek pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t have an “I Have a Plan” speech; he had an “I Have a Dream” speech. And people followed.
The word why takes me one other direction. I can’t hear it without thinking of Shawn Colvin’s song, “I Don’t Know Why.” The middle verses of the song say

I don’t know why
but somewhere dreams come true
and I don’t know where
but there will be a place for you
and every time you look that way
I would lay down my life for you
I don’t know why
I know these things, but I do

I don’t know why
but some are going to make you cry
and I don’t know how
but I will get you by, I will try
they’re not trying to cause you pain
they’re just afraid of loving you
I don’t know why
I know these things, but I do

Underneath her questions is a sense of solidarity, much like Sam Cooke singing, “Don’t know much about history . . . “—they both offer the hope of love in the midst of uncertainty.

but I do know that I love you
and I know that if you love me too
what a wonderful world it could be

The why we have to share with the world is we are here to love one another, every last one another, which means it could be a wonderful world.

Peace,
Milton

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