don't eat alone

The weeks have slipped by since I last wrote. My silence has not been for lack of ideas. Sometimes, in the midst of the shouting from both screen and page over the various crises that have come and gone, I have not felt the need to add my voice. The main reason, however, is my writing has been focused in other directions. I turned in the first draft of my next book (I love writing that sentence), which will be out in the fall. I have also been doing some work for my publisher that has afforded me different ways of seeing the words on the page as both a copyeditor and a curator of quotes for a devotional smart phone app.

As an author, I am creating something that wasn’t there before. I don’t know that I am saying anything that is completely new—in fact, I’m quite sure I’m not—but I am writing something that did not previously exist. The process is challenging, invigorating, frustrating, and despairing, depending on the hour. Regardless of the feeling in the moment, the overall arc—the point of view—is one of hope: I am working to contribute to the greater good, to foster community, to issue an invitation to connect. I want to write so that those who read can find resonance, to offer a way to look at the world that is filled with invitations.

As a copyeditor, the task is to correct, even to look for mistakes. I’m the one who checks for Oxford commas, who makes sure the writer knows the difference between that and which, who checks for spelling and punctuation. Though I manage to read the manuscript as I go, I am not looking to engage the author as much as I am just making sure he or she makes sense. My task is not relational. I don’t’ even deal directly with the writer. I like the work because it makes me learn the rules. I am a better writer from reading and righting what I find on the pages of others, and I’m glad it’s a side job because I weary of righting. I have to do it in short shifts because I get too focused on one or two errors and end up hunting for them. I remember the same dynamic from my days grading forty or fifty essays from my high school teaching days. To focus primarily on what is wrong for too long skews my vision. At the same time, my attention to their details offered them a chance to make things better. This time I didn’t have to grade them, just make corrections and comments.

The work on the devotional app has been like a treasure hunt. Once it’s up and running, a person can open the app on his or her phone and get a daily nugget of hope and encouragement. A sentence of support and solidarity. The publisher sent me a stack of books from their authors and invited me to go quote mining, which was a fun and fruitful exercise. Like the copyediting, I was not trying to take in the whole of what each one was saying, but this time I was looking for what they had done well. Instead of “look what you did wrong” it was “look what you said!” And I found much worth sharing.

To see the three points of view as metaphor continues to challenge me beyond the work itself. I am finding it helpful to pay attention to how I am looking at the world in a particular moment: am I creating resonance, correcting, or complimenting? Perhaps I need to notice if I only look at particular people or particular situations from one perspective. If someone feels the only way I look at them is as an editor, neither of us is getting a good look at the other. If someone feels I only pay attention long enough to get what I want from them, we are both losing out.

As Lent begins, and I begin my Lenten Journal for another year, I am mindful that paying attention to life means remembering to see in different ways on purpose. The Bible is filled with stories of people who were called to take a different look, to change their points of view. For that matter, so is most all of human history. To love, to grow, to forgive, to become all call us to new ways of seeing.

Open the eyes of my heart . . . .

Peace,
Milton

“Living Invitations”
A Sermon for Pilgrim United Church of Christ, Durham NC
John 1:43-51
January 18, 2015

When I was a kid I thought Jesus was magic.

I’m not talking about the miracles. Somehow those made sense in their own way. The Messiah ought to be able to do miracles. I mean the super hero stuff in the scenes like the one in the account we read this morning where Jesus walked up and said, “Follow me,” and people just dropped what they were doing and walked off into the gospel. There’s another scene where, as he was preparing to enter Jerusalem, Jesus tells his disciples they would see a man with a donkey. He told them to say, “The Master has need of it,” and the guy would give them the animal. I was convinced it was some sort of messianic mind control. The disciples found the guy and said the words and then magically, robotically, the man went to the barn and got the beast, all the time muttering, “Master needs donkey, master needs donkey.”

I was talking to my dad about it one day, explaining my theory, and he said, “I always figured that Jesus just knew the people beforehand.”

Though he took away my magic messiah, what he offered in return proved far better for my burgeoning faith. Our conversation was the beginning of my seeing how few details there are in the gospel accounts and how much is left out: whole conversations happen in a sentence or two; sweeping changes come with the turn of a phrase. So it is with our story this morning. Even John, who can stretch out a story—half of his gospel takes place in the last week of Jesus’s life—moves quickly through Jesus’ calling of his disciples. Jesus finds Philip in Galilee and says, “Follow me,” and the next thing you know Philip is gathering up several others.

My favorite part of this account begins with Nathaniel’s skepticism. He asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip echoes Jesus’s earlier words and says, “Come and see.” When Jesus sees Nathaniel, he says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” and Nathaniel says, “Where did you get to know me?” as if to say, “Finally—somebody gets me!”

We come to this story in the middle of the short liturgical season of Epiphany. Unlike Advent, we don’t count these Sundays down to a big finish. We have no candles to light. Unlike Lent, we have no big theme or focus, no call to repentance or silence. Epiphany is the in-between time, the path of days from Advent and Lent, that mostly feels cold and ordinary. No magic. I’ve often wondered how the word itself became attached to the coming of the Magi, because I’ve never really understood what an epiphany—in the way I learned the word as a sort of “aha!” moment—had to do with a few people with odd gifts showing up late to the party. The church history answer is the coming of the Magi represented the “manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles.”

One of the dictionary definitions for epiphany is “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.” The ordinary nature of Jesus’s interactions in our story this morning offers another answer. As Michael Rogness points out, “This text tells how it works: the Christian faith is passed from person to person. That’s how it started with Jesus, and that’s how it’s been for two thousand-plus years.” Our faith is shared most powerfully in the common occurrences of our daily interactions with one another.

I came across a cartoon last week titled, “Breakfast at Epiphany’s.” The line drawing showed people saying things like, “These eggs are amazing,” “It’s a caffeine miracle,” and “I finally understand hash browns!” A sudden perception of essential meaning from a common place experience. Dr. King talked people into walking and sitting down at lunch counters and boycotting buses to awaken us to the reality of racial injustice and to call us to come and see what we could do. Our world has been changed far less by grand gestures or sweeping decrees coming from the top down, and much more by one friend turing to another and saying, “Come and see what I have found;” by one person turning to another and saying, “Come and share what I have;” or “Come, let’s walk together.” As evidenced in the Incarnation, love is not an ideal or a proposition; Love has hands and feet. The revelation of Love is in the flesh. No magic. Just people—how did the dictionary say it?—simple, homely, or commonplace folks changing the world. Maybe homely goes a bit too far, but you get the idea. We find our way to Jesus—to love and to faith—through one another.

And it is through one another that we find our way to hope and joy as well. We live in days where we are offered examples of religious extremism and fundamentalism from those who attacked the cartoonists in Paris to those who reigned down on Duke this week for saying they would broadcast the Muslim call to prayer once a week. When all we are doing is shouting “No” in the name of whatever faith we profess, we are doing damage. Again, look at Dr. King and those with whom he worked. They were saying no to the injustice they saw, but that was not their primary source of hope. Martin found hope in saying yes to justice, yes to relationship, yes to love, yes to faith, even yes to joy. They marched on Washington singing, “Yes”—we shall overcome. Our call to follow Jesus is a call to be living invitations, whether marching for justice or walking down the halls here in our building.

As living invitations, may we be mindful we are not inviting people to be right or proper or correct. We are inviting people into relationship—with us, with Christ. We are inviting people to hope and faith and joy. We are inviting people to the messy work of community, to living out the commitment of life together on all the levels we can see. We are inviting one another to courage, to persistance, to compassion, to patience. We are inviting people to remember we are all wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. We are inviting people to the wonder of God that lives in the commonplace experiences of life together in Christ. May we be living invitations in all we do and say. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

Christmas was gone
before they got to the manger,
camels and servants grumbling.

“We saw his star in the east,” they said.

Mary wondered why
a sign from God didn’t get
them there on time for the birth.

“You missed the angel choir,” she replied.

They knelt before the babe,
offering gifts and hopeful hearts:
“What matters is we made it.”

Peace,
Milton

My friends, Burt and Julie, are celebrating the wedding of their son tomorrow. Several years ago, I wrote this poem remembering the birth of their daughter. Today seems a good day to look at it again.

this day after

Some time after seminary my
best friend, Burt, got married;
then a few more years and
they had a child. I remember
calling one day; he answered,
saying he was lying on the bed
looking at the baby. I asked,
“Do you ever look down and say,
‘You’re going to stay here?’”

Something about this day after,
this morning beyond the manger,
that reminds me God chose to
come into the world not fully
formed. Jesus looked up from
the straw much like Burt’s baby
from the bedspread, more
enchanted, perhaps, that he
could chew on his toes than

with what he would do later on.
I was two weeks old my first
Christmas; almost six decades of
Decembers have since passed
(twenty-five more birthdays than
Jesus had) and I couldn’t have
imagined that I would have to
span two centuries to get from
Corpus Christi to North Carolina.

Jesus considered lilies, cleansed
lepers, and chastised leaders who
thought they’d cornered the truth,
but not before he’d been a boy,
a teenager, a young adult; not before
he had increased in wisdom and
stature. And that first morning,
Mary might have looked and loved,
and said, smiling, “You’re staying.”

Peace,
Milton

This story is not new, but then neither are the feelings it names. Thanks for making the journey with me this Advent.

A Faraway Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace,
Milton