CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

I know it’s not even Thanksgiving yet and I’m one of those who wish the stores could wait just one more week before putting out the decorations and I’ve been thinking about Mary preparing herself to give birth, even though we aren’t quite done with the Pilgrims just yet. I think what set me to thinking about it was a note from my friend, Heather, saying her water had broken and she would be giving birth some time between now and tomorrow morning. Thinking of her also reminded me of why I like to read Luke 2 just the way Linus quoted it: from the King James version. No other version gives you language like this (trust me, I’ve looked):
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.She was great with child. The words are full of illustration, animation, and metaphor. I love the image of this young, poor, humble, and pregnant girl being (read this in your best Tony the Tiger voice) grrreat, as though she was both things. You know: great, with child. She apparently must have been a pretty good mother, so as Jesus grew (in wisdom and stature), perhaps they said in a different way that she was great with (her) child. Of course, if someone feels the need to point out great has to do with girth, then some of us have to come to terms with being great without child, but that’s another post.

The verses hold a companion phrase that also speaks to me: the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. (I picture the translators in a room somewhere coming up with that phrase and saying to one another, “That’s smashing, old boy. Jolly good show.”)

I’m captured by the verbs: accomplished and delivered.

Even as I prepare to spend the weekend getting ready to feed those who will gather with us for Thanksgiving, and that this is one of those years when Advent doesn’t begin the Sunday after the turkey, I find the animals in the stable of my heart getting restless, waiting for the days to be accomplished, or whatever needs to be accomplished, so we can gather around the manger. Tonight, as I wait for word that Heather has welcomed her new son, I give thanks for them and for the KJV guys and Linus and all those who sweep the barn clean so the baby can be born and we can all be delivered.

Peace,
Milton

P.S. -- There's a new recipe.

I had a little time this morning before I left for church and I began reading the new issue of Harpers that arrived over the weekend. What caught my eye was a full page ad of new books from Harvard University Press, and, in particular, one title: Loneliness as a Way of Life by Thomas Dumm. The resonance of the title sent me looking for more about both the book and author, and I found this:
“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds.

A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower.

Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.But I need to back up for a minute. The journey my thoughts took today began yesterday when Choralgirl mentioned the movie Home for the Holidays in her post, which is one of our must-see-again movies during the holidays. Which is to say, I’ve been thinking about home. Seeing the book title this morning just pushed me farther down the road.

I got to church a little early, so I went into our newly renovated church library and, after a little browsing, picked up Frederick Buechner’s The Longing for Home (big surprise), a book I read many years ago but didn’t retain. Something about the days growing colder pulls me to Buechner. The mention of King Lear in the description of Dumm’s book was also a connector. The first Buechner book I ever read was Telling the Truth: The Gospel, as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, in which he referenced one particular line from Lear:
The weight of these sad times we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
Those words have never let go of me. At the risk of being overly quoteful, I want to pass along the words that grabbed me before I went into worship this morning.
In a novel called Treasure Hunt, which I wrote some years ago, there is a scene of homecoming. The narrator, a young man named Antonio Parr, has been away for some weeks and on his return finds that his small son and some other children have made a sign for him that reads WELCOME HONE with the last little leg of the m in home missing so that it turns it into a n. “It seemed oddly fitting,” Antonio Parr says when he first sees it. “It was good to get home, but it was home with something missing or out of whack about it. It wasn’t much, to be sure, just some minor stroke or serif, but even a minor stroke can make a major difference.” And then a little while later he remembers it a second time and goes on to add, “WELCOME HONE, the sign said, and I can’t help thinking again of Gideon and Barak, of Samson and David and all the rest of the crowd . . . who, because some small but crucial thing was missing, kept looking for it come hell or high water wherever they went till their eyes were dim and their arches fallen . . .In the long run I suppose it would be to think of everybody if you knew enough about them to think straight.” (17)Buechner goes on to say Parr was referencing Hebrews 11:13, 14:
These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.Strangers and exiles: those acquainted with loneliness; those who are always headed for, looking for, longing for home.

November, for me, is the clubhouse turn towards home. Thanksgiving means I go on a pie-baking binge and hand them out to the neighbors, wherever our neighborhood has been, and that we do our best to fill our table with those who need to be at home for the holidays. We don’t have our final count for this year, but the table is filling up. Thanksgiving is also the precursor for Advent, the season of longing that takes us home for the holidays in a more permanent sense. Though I’ve still got a couple of weeks, something about the words that found me let me know I’m heading home a little earlier than usual.

Bewteen Buechner and the boys holding up the misspelled sign, I found myself humming a homecoming song I haven’t thought about in awhile, but gives soundtrack to my feelings today.
please celebrate me home
give me a number
please celebrate me home
play me one more song
I can always remember
and I can recall whenever
I find myself too all alone
I can sing me homeFrom Dumm to Buechner to Loggins and all of us in between, home is the place we long for and look for and occasionally stumble into. The address is often elusive, but we know it by the smells or the tastes or the melodies or the faces looking back at us when we walk in. And, if the song were playing, everyone from Samson and David to King Lear and Cordelia to Antoine Parr might sing:
well, I’m finally here
but I’m bound to roam
come on, celebrate me homeYes. Please. Celebrate me hone.



Peace,
Milton

Ginger and I agree on most things in life, but one of the places where we differ is our disparate opinions of The Office. She can’t stand it and it cracks me up. I’m late to the show, actually, catching up these days with through cable reruns and well aware that the original British version is probably even funnier. I thought about the show today because I heard part of an NPR interview with Ricky Gervais, the creator of both series and the star of the British version. I stepped out between two catering gigs to grab a cup of coffee and a shot of thoughtfulness thrown in for free.

Gervais has just finished a US stand up tour and was promoting an HBO special that is coming up. In the part of the interview I got to hear, he was talking a bit more philosophically about what comedy means and where it comes from. I’m fortunate that npr.org has a transcript of the part of the interview that I heard:
"America is my mecca for entertainment. Everything I have ever loved has come out of America," Gervais says. Those comics "taught me that you have to be at the bottom rung of the ladder. No one wants to see unfeasibly handsome, clever people doing things brilliantly; they want to see a putz struggling and falling over, and the important thing is getting back up again."

Gervais insists there is no place for a peacock in comedy. He says it's all about being the everyman and maintaining a fallible persona that people can relate to. "There should be no machismo in a comedian because comedy is about empathy," he says. "I think the audience doesn't need to be told that your life is better than theirs."

In Out of England, Gervais comes onstage with a king's crown and a rock star's pomp, accompanied by fireworks and Queen's "One World, One Vision." His ostentatious entrance is a tongue-in-cheek jab at production values and the idea of celebrity.

"Soon you find out that all my anecdotes of fame are about me being the underdog, me being embarrassed socially, depressed, everyone getting the better of me," he says.

Gervais says returning to stand-up has allowed him to discover the importance of physical comedy. He realized "what people liked was me acting out a scenario as opposed to just telling jokes," he says. "Because comedy is empathy, most of the things we identify with are probably nonverbal. Body language and the way that you feel things are are more important than what you hear."Comedy is empathy. He said it twice. Comedy is empathy.

One of my favorite movies is an offbeat little comedy that was one of Luke and Owen Wilson’s first films: Bottle Rocket. The tag line to the movie was, They’re not really criminals, but everybody’s got to have a dream.” Owen plays Dignan, a lovable goof who thinks his seventy-five year plan to criminal success is the key to life. Luke plays his friend Andrew who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Dignan sees his plan as salvation for them both and begins to put together a team. In the scene below, he’s interviewing Bob for the position of getaway driver.



“That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.” Empathy.

In another one of my favorite movies, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) says to one of his students, “We’re not laughing at you; we’re laughing near you.” Comedy is empathy.

Empathy is identifying with the feelings and actions of someone else so much, as one dictionary put it, that when the batter swings the bat your muscles tense. It is identification, connectedness. The comic is not saying, “You’re like me,” but rather, “This is what it feels like to be in your skin.” Comedy is incarnational.

I loved what he said and I thought about it as I was helping to prepare dinner tonight for a roomful of people I didn’t even see. I ran through several comedians in my mind and soon realized Gervais was not describing all of the comedy there is, but what he saw as comedy at its best. He was making a bold statement in a world filled with biting and cynical satire where comedy is mostly target practice. He was offering a powerful and gentle alternative.

Though his words sent me thinking more metaphorically about comedy, particularly related to faith – Jesus as the original stand up comic – I wanted to pass along what I heard because it’s worth regarding someone who takes the time to think about what they do, about what they mean, and then moves to embody those thoughts with intentionality.

That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.

Peace,
Milton

Several years ago, Ginger asked me to write a story for Christmas Eve. What came out of me was a Dr. Suess-ish sort of tale that has found a life in many places on Christmas Eves since. The story begins this way:
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.This year, you can hear the story in a different way -- on audio CD. My friend Terry Allebaugh added a wonderful harmonica soundtrack, my friend Claudia Fulshaw created beautiful artwork for the cover and the insert, and I read the story and added a couple of other touches. I'm proud of what we did and excited to share it.

In the sidebar to the left is the PayPal button that will make your purchase possible. The CD is $10.00, plus $2.00 for shipping. If your order is over $50.00, shipping is free. (That's in the U.S.) I will sign, seal, and deliver (or at least mail) the CDs myself.

Entrepreneurship is not my gift. I'm grateful to Gordon Atkinson for his encouragement and technical advice, to Claudia and Terry, and to Ginger for calling the story out of me in the first place.

The story runs on several different levels and is appropriate for most any age. I hope you enjoy it.

Peace,
Milton

I talked to my dad this morning as I was going into work. They had just taken my mother into surgery and we were getting ready for a long day of waiting. I did not expect to hear from him until at least four o'clock. Two and a half hours later, he called to say the surgeons found things much less complicated than they expected and they were finished. Mom was already in recovery. Dad called tonight to say she is in a step down room from the ICU and is expected to go home on Monday or Tuesday.

I am grateful.

Peace,
Milton

Sometimes life drifts apart; sometimes it comes together.

Within the last week, several members of my former youth group in Texas found me via Facebook. I still haven’t figured out how to navigate that rather formidable universe, but I am enjoying finding old friends. One of the things we shared in our years together were the songs my friend Billy Crockett and I wrote for youth camp each summer. One chorus didn’t require much work lyrically, on our part, but came together quite well:
God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
hallelujah he is for usSome years later, Billy was thinking about recording the song (which he did on the CD Red Bird Blue Sky) and decided we needed to write verses. At the time, my father had a serious case of pneumonia and I was really worried about him. And the verses we wrote carried both that concern and the hope that carried us. When we finished, the whole song looked like this:
God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

for all the damage done
still won’t turn and run
hearts have been broken
dreams have been stolen
but nothing takes these words away

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

the places that we go
so many different roads
no present danger
no distant future
will take us where we cannot know

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for usTonight I talked to my mother as I walked to my car after work. She had had a hard day and sounded worn out. Her surgery is at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and is expected to take most of the day. Like so many years ago, I am concerned and feeling the distance between us. Tonight, pieces of my past came back together to remind me of what I know is true underneath the uncertainty.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to imbed an audio file so you could hear the song. If anyone knows how to do that on Blogger, please let me know.

I turned one year old on a ship sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for Africa.

My parents were going to be missionaries in Southern Rhodesia and I was along for the ride. In 1957, the only way to get from Texas to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia was by ship, and then car. We were thirty-two days at sea, leaving New York harbor and stopping only once on the island of St. Helena before docking in Beira, Mozambique. Somewhere in the open water I celebrated my first birthday.

The first task of a missionary in those days was language school. Sindabele was the native tongue (one of the Bantu languages) and my parents were told that the first six weeks of their new life would involve nothing but language classes. They hired a woman named Salina to stay with me while they went about their lessons. One of the favorites stories my father tells is getting one of their first vocabulary lists and finding the word “isikwapa” and it’s translation: armpit. My father was livid and said, “I came halfway around the world to tell people about Jesus and the first word you teach me is armpit!”

Fifty years on, it’s the only Sindabele word any of my family remembers.

Sindabele is one of the “click languages,” meaning there are actual clicking sounds connected to the consonants. You don’t just say the letter, you pop your tongue in one of several ways to make the sound. As a little one, who learned the language faster from Salina than my parents did at school, I couldn’t say the word and the click, I would do one and then the other. No wonder I was fascinated when Miriam Makeba recorded “The Click Song” just a couple of years later.

I tell that story because Miriam Makeba died today at 76. Beyond “The Click Song,” the woman known as “Mama Africa” was one of those voices of freedom that has resonance across generations. She is South African who lived through apartheid and saw her Nelson Mandela become president. She died after singing a concert in Italy in support of another artist taking a stand for what matters. She had a long and full life, far beyond what I knew about it. I didn’t follow her career or know too much more of her music than the song that captured me as a child. And that connection is enough to stop, take notice, and give thanks she sang as she did.



Peace,
Milton

One of the things I love about our church is there is always a certain level of improvisation, particularly when it comes to worship. Our worship is well planned and very intentional and, like good improv, Ginger often uses what we have prepared and the talents she knows we have to offer and calls us to step into the moment, often in that moment. So it was, when I got to church this morning – about ten minutes before the service began – that James, our wonderful music minister, was walking down the hall saying, “Milton, I know you’re here. We need you for the introit.”

He found me. We practiced. Ten minutes later I was standing at the front of the church and singing
we plow the fields and scatter
the good seed on the land
but it is fed and watered
by God’s almighty hand
he sends the snow in winter
the warmth to swell the grain
the springtime and the sunshine
the cold refreshing rain
all good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above
so thank the Lord, yes thank the Lord
for all his loveI went to church this morning with a lot on my heart. My mother is having surgery on Wednesday and, without telling a story that is more hers than mine to tell, it’s a big deal. I went to church this morning, more than anything else, to ask my fellow Pilgrims to pray with me. Even though I live with the pastor, I had no idea what hymns she had chosen, but here is how they went down. After the introit and our call to worship we sang another favorite of mine, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” My heart hung on these words:
summer and winter and springtime and harvest
sun moon and stars in their courses above
join with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness mercy and love
great is thy faithfulness great is thy faithfulness
morning by morning new mercies I see
all I have needed thy hand hath provided
great is thy faithfulness Lord unto meOur prayer time soon followed. I told my church family what was happening in my family and asked for prayers for my mother. Others lifted up their joys and concerns, which included celebrating a ninetieth birthday with one of our dear ones, and then, as has become our custom, we sat quietly at the end of Ginger’s prayer and listened to the choral response, which begins with a piano instrumental until the voices finish the verse of another favorite hymn:
here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it
seal it for thy courts above.After the children’s time, we sent them off to Sunday School singing
we are walking in the light of God
we are walking in the light of God
we are walking, we are walking
we are walking in the light of God.When Ella was first learning to walk on a leash, she responded with a combination of distraction and determination to not go quietly down the street. In her one year of life (her birthday was November 4), she has chewed through five – count them, five – lifetime warranty leashes. One day, amidst the frustration of our endeavor, I decided I would see if singing might make a difference, and I began singing the same chorus we sang to send off the children, with one small change:
Ella’s walking Ella's walking
Ella's walking in the light of God . . .As soon as she heard the song, she began trotting down the street and continues to do so even now. Something about the light keeps her moving. As I listened and sang this morning, I found the same is true for me.

After church and coffee hour, we had our monthly deacons’ meeting and, since it’s November, the budget was part of the agenda. As I’m sure is true in many churches, the discussion was colored by the present state of the economy, which pulled us too quickly to being distracted by all we think we can’t do rather than who we believe God is calling us to be in the year ahead. Though we didn’t sing to get ourselves back in the light, we did talk our way there. We will need to keep talking and remembering if we are to live into the words that were our closing hymn today:
not alone we conquer, not alone we fall
in each loss or triumph, lose or triumph all
bound by God’s far purpose in one living whole
move we on together to the shining goal
forward through the ages in unbroken line
move the faithful spirits at the call divine.One of the reasons I love the last hymn is it takes the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” so we can sing about something other than war, which is not a metaphor for faith that does much for me. I’m not looking for a fight. I am looking to be reminded of what I know is true: whatever circumstances life presents, Love is the Last Word. When I remember who I am and Whose I am, as the old saying goes, I can also remember the best response to that kind of Love is gratitude.

Thank the Lord, yes thank the Lord for all the love.



Now I’m going to sing myself to sleep.

Peace,
Milton

When I got to the front yard, my neighbor had
just finished raking the leaves. Our property line
was well delineated: no leaves on his lawn,
leaves on mine. He has chosen to participate in
fall’s festival of futility in ways I have not. I’m
waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow them
all down the block to belong to someone else.

The leaves are more singular in their task than I;
all they have to do at this point is let go and fall.
I have to -- well, I won’t bore you with my to dos --
let’s just say I already have enough futile flailings
to attend that I don’t need to add raking to my list.
And so my yard is full of leaves -- let me be clear --
not because I didn’t have time to rake, or I didn’t
buy a rake, or I had planned to rake and was kept
from my task by some circumstantial emergency.

I’ve chosen to let my lawn be a sanctuary for the
fallen, a place for leaves to land and stay for as
long as they like. If I do gather them at all, it
will be to make a big pile for the purpose of
doing my best Snoopy impression, shuffling
through the stack, my head kicked back in glee,
until all the leaves are scattered once more
across the yard. Then I will wave to my
neighbor as he rakes, and go inside, grateful.


















Peace,
Milton

On our trip to Texas, we stopped for coffee somewhere south of Waco and, along with our beverages, we picked up James Taylor’s new CD, Covers, to give us a break from the radio. As I said earlier this week, my life is a movie in search of a soundtrack. A couple of cuts in, I could feel something change inside me as he began to sing, “I am a lineman for the county.” I have loved “Wichita Lineman” since I first heard Glen Campbell sing it on a record my parents had, to when I learned Jimmy Webb wrote it, to when I heard Jimmy Webb sing it, and on down until JT’s soft, well-weathered voice carried the words and music as we drove up that Texas highway last week.

The BBC said it was No. 87 of the Top 100 Songs and Rolling Stone put it at No. 187 of it’s Top 500 Songs of All Time, right after "Free Bird," which makes for an interesting juxtaposition. Here are the lyrics:
I am a lineman for the county.
and I drive the main road
searching in the sun for another overload

I hear you singing in the wire
I can hear you thru the whine
and the Wichita lineman is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation
but it don't look like rain
and if it snows that stretch down south
won't ever stand the strain

and I need you more than want you
and I want you for all time
and the Wichita lineman is still on the lineFrom my earliest memories, the song is tied to “Gentle on my Mind,” which was on the same record. Both of them are unusual love songs, I suppose, and I sang along heartily even though I had no idea what he was singing about, other than I liked the word pictures of
moving down the back roads by the rivers of my memory
and for hours your just gentle on my mind
As I have heard “Wichita Lineman” over the years, I’ve come to see it as a tenacious love song. Here’s a guy who is dutifully doing what he thinks needs to be done and, even in the midst of his hard work, love comes singing to find him. The lines that kill me are
and I need you more than want you
and I want you for all time
and the Wichita Lineman is still on the lineGinger and I talked again today about how our work schedules – OK, mostly mine, since I work five nights a week, and this week, six – keep us from eating dinner together or being able to get out and do much. Maybe the song hits because I feel like the Bull City Line Cook who is still on a line of his own. Most any afternoon, one of us calls the other and says something like, “I just missed you and wanted to say, ‘Hi’.” Even though the phones have nothing to do with lines anymore, I can still hear her heart sing. However the equation of need and want plays out, what I understand almost twenty years on is the tenacity of love is not about hanging on, or hanging in there, but about diligently boring into one another’s beings and determinedly tightening the bonds between us, regardless of schedules and duties and whatever else life may hold. Whether all has been said and done, or there is still much to do and say, we are together.

And we have music to play as we go.


James Taylor - Wichita Lineman
Uploaded by taduckly_
Peace,
Milton

The opening scene of the movie, Big, (as I remember it, twenty years later) was of Josh and his friend, Billy, walking together down a tree-lined street singing,
The space goes down, down baby, down, down the roller coaster. Sweet, sweet baby, sweet, sweet, don't let me go. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. I met a girlfriend - a triscuit. She said, a triscuit - a biscuit. Ice cream, soda pop, vanilla on the top. Ooh, Shelly's out, walking down the street, ten times a week. I read it. I said it. I stole my momma's credit. I'm cool. I'm hot. Sock me in the stomach three more times.OK, I didn’t remember their song; I found it here. But I do remember the street, lined with giant trees in their full autumn regalia, looking about as American as it gets. For a long time I wondered where those streets were, then I moved to Boston and found those streets, but I never got to live on one of them.

Until now.

Here is what our street looked like this morning when I turned to the left


and to the right.


Yup. I’m cool. I’m hot. I'm fortunate. Sock me in the stomach three more times.

Peace,
Milton

I woke up thinking about the Kenyan election that was held some time back. Was thought to be one Africa’s most stable democracies was ripped apart when the results did not go the way the party in power hoped they would. I woke up thinking about it because I had spent the evening watching power change hands and seeing both candidates graciously take their places in the transition.

Yes, the final weeks of the campaign looked, as one commentator described it, like “a knife fight in a phone booth,” but no one was killed, no one was violently intimidated, and we elected a new president. There are a number of things I wish were different about the way we behave and operate politically as Americans, but today I woke up thankful for what we accomplished last night.

Peace,
Milton

I suppose there are any number of ways I could describe my life, but one that fits as well as any is a movie in search of a soundtrack. Whatever is going on, I’m always listening for the right song to rise up from the jukebox in my mind and take it’s place on the turntable. (Yes, I realize the metaphor needs to be updated.)

Though North Carolina is a state with an early voting option, Ginger and I waited until this morning to vote just because we like voting on Election Day. I made a quick trip to Dunkin Donuts to get our stand-in-line coffees and then we walked the block and a half to the polling place in our neighborhood, which is the local elementary school. Since we live in a very politically and culturally active area, the lines weren’t long because most of our neighbors voted early, so we were home just a little after seven. Up until today, I’ve voted only in Texas and Massachusetts during presidential elections, which means the fate of the state was already determined before I even cast my ballot. This year, North Carolina is one of the “swing states” (I like that better than “battleground”) and my vote carries some weight beyond my exercising my opportunity to be a part of the process.

This election marks the ninth time I have voted for president. I turned eighteen in 1974, just two years after my family had moved back to the States from Africa, and I was still figuring out what it meant to be an American in many ways. (Wait – I’m still trying to figure that one out.) For all that confounded and overwhelmed me, I was taken in most by the music. When we lived overseas, music was one of the main ways I felt connected to the US. I can remember getting James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James, or Crosby, Stills, and Nash, or Carole King’s Tapestry (just to name a few). One of the albums that marked me most was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. We moved to Houston in January of 1973 and somewhere in that year Paul Simon went solo and released There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, which had the radio hit, “Kodachrome.” For a kid in eleventh grade what’s not to connect with a song that begins
when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
it’s a wonder I can think at all.And it’s not the best song on the record. “St. Judy’s Comet” is a wonderful take on a lullaby, “Loves Me Like a Rock” is good gospel fun, “Something So Right” is worth hearing just about any time, and then there’s the song I woke up humming in my head this morning, “An Ameican Tune.”
Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some restTwo things about this song pull at me. The first is the lyric, which is a mixture of hope and struggle. Regardless of who wins the presidency today, we face the daunting task as a nation of figuring out how to be together. Reconciliation needs to become our national pastime. We are all wounded and battered. I wonder why it’s so hard to find the connectedness in our pain. We seem so quick to choose to strike out, as if seeing others hurt like we do makes things better. Would that in what feels like our age’s most uncertain hour, our American tune would be orchestrated with something other than the cannon of the 1812 Overture.

Speaking of tunes, the second thing that pulls me to this song is the melody, which is an adaptation of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, or (as I know it) “O, Sacred Head Now Wounded.” Melody leads to melody and then to lyric, and I am pulled to the final verse of the hymn, which are some of my favorite words in any song:
what language shall I borrow to thank thee, Dearest Friend
for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?
o, make me thine forever, and should I fainting be
Lord, let me never, ever outlive my love for theeI know nothing of how Simon came to put his words to Bach’s melody, but that those notes can carry both the uncertain feelings about my country and the heart of my faith calls me to think about how I can carry the reconciling love of God into the uncivil conflict that is our political arena. As a nation, we can’t be forever blessed, but as children of God we never run out of love. How can it be that it seems so much easier to choose sides than it is to choose solidarity?



Peace,
Milton

When Ginger and I fly, she always takes the window seat and I always opt for the aisle, which means, from time to time, someone unrelated to us sits in the middle. Last night on the flight home from Texas, a rather chatty woman sat between us and covered a wide variety of subjects from her husband’s impending trip to Iraq to do software work for the Department of Defense to her church in Austin. At one point, she was talking about something that had happened at the church and she said, “I went to the pastor and said, ‘If you don’t want people to dwell on the past you’ve got to show us what’s next.’”

While she continued talking, my mind wandered off on a journey of its own. We were flying back from Texas because we had flown down on Friday for three events that were all something other than “what’s next”: my brother’s fiftieth birthday (or, at least when we could celebrate it), my dad’s eightieth birthday (same scenario), and my thirtieth college reunion – all three markers that gave me pause to look back more than forward.

Those words, however, are not enough. When it comes to time, we lack for sufficient vocabulary. When we convince ourselves time is linear, we’re working with a deeply flawed metaphor. This is a line:

________________________________________


It lies flat on the page and runs in two directions. If you want to be generous, you can say it has two dimensions, but only if you draw a really fat line. Time is so much more. Think about the verbs we use. We save time, lose time, make time, waste time, have time, take time, and – on weekends like the one I just lived – we move through time as though it were an environment.

I’ve not been on the Baylor campus in a number of years and have not been to Homecoming in a decade. When we parked the car at the stadium on Saturday and walked across the grass to the tents for the reunion picnics, I wondered what I was in for. Ginger and I got our plates of barbeque and moved toward the tent and the first two people I saw were Al and Keith, pledge brothers, who called my name and hugged me and the years disappeared with their welcome. It was not about how long it had been as it was about being, together. We had missed much of each other’s lives (they had children, now out of college, I had never seen) and we found the gossamer strands of friendship still tethered us. For the next couple of hours, I talked with folks whom I had not seen in years, picking up conversations we had laid down and continuing on.

Webster says a reunion is “an assembling of persons who have been separated.” And so it is. We walked through time, across time, even out of time to find one another on the field we had walked together long ago, and, as we stood, we grew back together. Rumi wrote,
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.Time is a field, where we can meet and re-member ourselves, reunite ourselves, not looking only for what is next, but for all that ties us together. The day was filled with good things, yet I would have made one change. I would move Homecoming to March, so that we could have stood together in the field, surrounded by bluebonnets.


Peace,
Milton

We took Ella walking in the middle of the night last night, so I didn’t get my daily dose of Jon Stewart, so, when I got home tonight, Ginger and I watched last night’s episode of The Daily Show, which included this report from John Oliver at both McCain and Obama campaign rallies.



The clip made me laugh (“Oh, that was an unfortunate time for a slip-up.”) and it made me sad; sad, because Oliver is right that our biggest commonality as Americans appears to be our fear and we appear to be mostly frightened of each other.

I don’t know what to do with that. So I guess I have to say it got me riled up a bit as well.

2 Timothy 2:7, as I learned it years ago from the King James, says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” That doesn’t sound like much of anyone I hear talking about this election, Christian or otherwise. We seem to be running scared to the polls, afraid of what the other side is going to do to America.

The problem is we seldom make good choices when we’re scared, election year or not.

It’s news to no one, unless you’re here for the first time, that I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. But I’m not voting for him because I’m scared of John McCain or Sarah Palin. I disagree with them on many things, I don’t see them as the best choice we have this time around, but I’m not scared of them or of what they might do. Things are going to change, regardless of who wins. The government is going to do some things I like and some things I don’t regardless of who wins. America is going to have to cope with its changing place in the world regardless of who wins. But America is not who gives us a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. To allow fear to control our votes is not to vote for, but against. We rarely say, “Yes” out of fear; we say, “No,” hoping it will keep us safe.

When we go vote, may we do so with a spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. May we be mindful that those who are voting differently are not enemies to be feared, but fellow citizens to be regarded, regardless of how they choose to see us. May we not run scared, but move with intentionality and resolve. And may we never run into John Oliver when he’s doing interviews.

Peace,
Milton

Every so often, I come across a Cheers episode on television. For all the years between now and the days when it set my Thursday night schedule, the show holds up pretty well. My favorite scene is Norm walking in and heading to his usual perch.
Woody: How are you doing, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Woody, it’s a dog eat dog world and I’m wearing Milkbone underwear.What has weathered time the best is the theme song:
Sometimes you want to go
where everybody knows your name
and they’re always glad you came
you want to go where people know
their troubles are all the same you want to go
where everybody knows your nameThe song holds up because it’s true, or at least it’s true for me. I love feeling like I belong. Friday night, my friend Lindsey and I went out to celebrate the Fall Festival of the Durham Chapter of the Pastoral Partners’ Support Group (the New England Chapter is chaired by my friend Doug, now in Mystic CT) since our partners, Ginger and Carla, were away on a church trip. Lindsey has been great about taking me to places in Durham I’ve yet to go, so we ended up at Bull McCabes, a great little Irish pub downtown. While we were eating and talking, two people I know – that’s right, TWO – stopped by the table to say hi.

Two people. In a bar I had never been in before.

“It’s how you know you’re home,” Lindsey said.

And it’s why I cook. Yes, I love food and looking at recipes and coming up with stuff for menus that is cool and interesting, but that only takes me so far. For me, the meal is not, ultimately, about what’s on the plate but who’s picking up the fork. It’s not for nothing that Jesus put a meal as the central ritual of what it means to follow him. When you eat and drink, he said, remember me. Though I certainly don’t claim to spend all my days in such deep theological thought, meals are a way to re-member – to put back together – what the day has torn apart, or at least disassembled. What I hope happens at the tables where our food is served is the eating and drinking is metaphor for deeper sustenance and nourishment shared among those dining together.

The restaurant at Duke has been on a slow burn. We have not been inundated with customers since the beginning of the year, but things have improved a little each week. And we have a strong group of regulars who come in at least once a week. In my role as the evening chef, I get to step out from the kitchen several times during the night and talk to people at their tables, which has also allowed me to get to know some of our repeating diners, and even to learn their names. A couple of them have even come to church.

Tonight, two students came in (not together) whose names I have had a hard time remembering for some reason. Tonight, I got them both right: Stacey and David. Stacey was with her friend Haley. They come in at least once a week and always get the chocolate chip pan cookie (with caramel ice cream and hot fudge sauce) for dessert. David is usually alone, but tonight brought his friend, John. Last Wednesday, Evan, Jim, and Matt came in and said, “Since we’re regulars now, we think we ought to take good care of our chef,” and gave me a bottle of wine. Yes, I’m planning a little something special for them when they come in this week.

I’m not under any illusions that we are all somehow becoming close friends because I call them by name when I bring out their entrees. What I am saying is I was reminded again tonight that the reason I love to cook has more to do with who is eating than what is being eaten.

Years ago, my friend Jeter Basden was leading a Sunday School Teachers’ Workshop for my youth Sunday School teachers in my youth minister days. He wrote this sentence on the board:
I teach young people the Bibleand said, “You tell me the direct object of the sentence and I’ll tell you what kind of teacher you are.” He went on to say, “If you think you teach the Bible, you can talk all day and miss them all; if you think you teach students, you can read from the phone book and change their lives.” Though there’s not a corresponding sentence for life in the kitchen, the premise holds up. I do my best work when I’m in touch with who I’m cooking for over what I’m cooking. Both matter a great deal, but only the former makes real strides towards re-membering. Stacey loved her meal. She told me so. But it mattered more that I remembered her name. I saw it in her smile when I got it right. I’ll bet she could see it in my smile, too.



Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- There's a new recipe.

Over the past several weeks I’ve had to learn how to send text messages because it is my boss’ preferred way of mobile communication. By accident one day, I pressed a button on my phone that read, “T9word,” and discovered my choice enabled my phone to anticipate the word I was typing, thus speeding up the process. When I finish a word, my phone automatically throws up the word that followed it the last time, assuming (it seems to me) that I am a man of very few sentences, or at least amazingly predictable. What began as a convenience has become quite claustrophobic.

As the election draws near and the volume continues to rise from all directions (though, I suppose, in our polarized culture that should read both directions), it seems we are living in a T9 world. When one side speaks, the other fills in the words before they are finished, not because they are listening but because they are readying their response. For all the rallies, press conferences, punditry, analyses, interviews, and whatever else fills up our twenty-four hour news cycle, it’s been a long time since anyone said something that mattered – even longer since anyone listened.

In the introduction to her sermon this morning, Ginger talked about the twenty-five years her mother ran a day care in her home. Rachel has an amazing way with wee ones. One of my favorite stories is one Ginger told this morning. Rachel went to the group playing outside and said, “OK, people, it’s time for lunch.”

One three-year old turned to another and said, “Her called us people.” Even at three, the little girl understood what it felt like to be respected, regarded, and taken seriously as a human being.

Over the quarter century, every child who came through that house learned this verse, almost before anything else:
BE YE KIND, ONE TO ANOTHER.Ginger then turned to the old joke about the preacher who preached his first Sunday before his new congregation and was well received. When he preached the same sermon the second Sunday, the deacons were a bit befuddled, but cut him some slack since he was still getting settled. When he preached the exact same sermon a third time, they confronted him.

“I’ll be happy to move on,” he said, “as soon as you get this one right.”

Her words took me back to one of her sermons that has hung with me for almost two years, in which she quoted Philo of Alexandria:
BE KIND, FOR EVERYONE IS FIGHTING A GREAT BATTLE.When I wrote about it then, I was working for an erratic and eccentric man who seemed to thrive on making the people around him miserable. Taking her words to heart was a challenging spiritual journey for me. I would love to say I have mastered the art of kindness and have moved on, but it is not so. I need to hear the same sermon again and again, as I did this morning.

Our NPR station was having their fundraiser this week, so I changed stations just to hear something other than the appeals for money. I landed on the local talk radio station, which is a world into which I seldom venture. I felt as though I had crossed into a parallel universe. That they presented a view farther to the right of NPR or me was not a surprise; the level of volume and vitriol was, however. These are guys who command huge audiences across the country, or at least that’s my perception. How can anger that severe be so popular?

My question is not an ideological one. I’m not asking why those right wing talk show hosts can’t be as thoughtful and quiet as their liberal counterparts. My impression is there is plenty of anger on both sides to go around. I’m not looking for an Us vs. Them scenario, either, though that seems to be the most American of perspectives. We cannot afford, however, to let ourselves see it as the Christian perspective.

When they asked Jesus what mattered most, he leaned back into the old joke Ginger told and preached the same sermon:
LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL THAT YOU ARE
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.Regardless of our political preferences, our fundamental allegiances are to God and to one another. Not to country. Not to party. Not to ideology. Not to personality. Not to stock portfolio or hedge fund. Not to class or race or even religion.

To God.
And to one another.

As we sang in our service today:
We are called to be God's people,
showing by our lives God’s grace,
one in heart and one in spirit,
sign of hope for all the race.
Let us show how God has changed us,
and remade us as God’s own,
let us share our life together
as we shall around God’s throne.We are all wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and we are all wounded. What was said of Rachel by the little one can be said of God: “Her called us people.” May we bear the grace given to us in a way that shows kindness to one another.

And may I keep the old joke close because I’m going to need to hear this again.

Peace,
Milton

Lesson One: Remember What It Feels Like.

Sunday nights I work at the Durham restaurant. The guy who is my second at Duke works there also, after doing the brunch shift on campus. When he got to work, he told me our Duke dishwasher had not shown up, which meant the cook got to wash all the pots and pans and plates and glasses and, well, everything. Neither of us had phone information for the dishwasher, but my cook knew where he lived and was going to stop by and make sure he was coming to work on Monday.

We need all hands on deck the first day of the week because it is the big preparation day: everything has to be made. I go in about eleven to get started and to do my part for the lunch shift. My second is due in at two. About one the phone rang and he told me, first, that the dishwasher was coming in. Then he told me he was in Greensboro and wouldn’t be in until three-thirty or four. At two,, he called back to say he wasn’t going to be in at all.

Thanks to the dishwasher, a Duke student who wants to learn more about cooking, and anyone else who happened into the kitchen, we got the prep work done and the meals cooked and served. I got out of the kitchen at nine-thirty, rather than eight o’clock. I drove home wondering how the guy who got stuck with the dishes on Sunday could turn around and do the same thing to someone else on Monday. I don’t know what kept him in Greensboro; he didn’t tell me. I do know, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” feels particularly poignant this morning.

Lesson Two: Ask for Help.

The dishwasher and the student are a study in contrasts. The dishwasher has been in this country for a dozen years, has worked as a landscaper since his teens, and is always looking to learn more. The student was born in this country, has not really had to work for his station in life, and wants to learn, but begins from a position of what he thinks he already knows, rather than what there is to learn.

When the dishwasher started working for us, he came to me one day and said, “I want to learn how to cook. Will you teach me?” Each shift, my second and I have brought him up on the line and taught him one of the dishes. He both listens and remembers well, down to the details. He has become our go to guy on the pasta dishes when things get busy.

The student loves food and cooking and does know a good bit about it, but more from books and meals he has eaten rather than those he has cooked. He has no restaurant cooking experience. Yet, when I ask him to do something, I have yet to hear him say, “I don’t know how to do that. Will you show me?” Last night I asked him to julienne some red peppers, which means to cut them into long thin strips. I think I could have grown peppers faster than he cut them. When he was done, he asked if they were all right, and then said, “I’ve never done that before.”

I wish he had started there.

Lesson Three: Be Willing to Learn.

The glue that holds our operation together is a guy who makes deliveries between the two restaurants and the catering kitchen. We all have his mobile phone number and you know you can call and say, “I need (whatever it is),” and he will bring it expeditiously. When I called to tell my Chef I was playing shorthanded, she called back to say she was sending him over to help, which was great news to me because he’s a pleasure to have around, even beyond his willingness to work and do whatever needs to be done. He showed up around four-thirty and stayed for about an hour and a half.

I should back up and add one thing: he started to work about seven yesterday morning and was due to get off around four.

One of the tasks I had for him was to pound out the boneless chicken breasts so they would cook evenly for our dishes. “No problem,” he said. “Just show me how to do it.” (He obviously has already mastered Lesson Two.) I showed him how to put the chicken between two pieces of plastic wrap and how to use the side of the mallet, rather than the end with the points, so the meat stayed intact. He made short work of the rest of the chicken and moved on to other things. As he was getting ready to leave, I thanked him for his help and he said, “No problem. And thanks for showing me how to do the chicken. I learned something new. If I can learn something, it’s a good day, no matter what else happened.”

By the time I got to the end of my day, I had three lessons worth learning and re-learning (and probably re-learning again). The day was long and I was tired on the drive home, but he was right: it was a good day.

Peace,
Milton

“Whose picture is on the money?”
he asked, before there was paper money
peopled with presidents. I’ve got a Lincoln,
Hamilton, and a couple of Washingtons
bunched up in my pants pocket; wait –
lucky day: there’s a Jackson in there, too.
Not too many Benjamins around our house.

“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,”
he said, centuries before rendering had
anything to do with cooking. Still, for
centuries chefs have rendered the fat from
ducks and pigs, cooking it long and slow until
the impurities burn away, and straining it to leave
a clear , pure fat that holds heat and flavor.

I can burn through a pocket full of money
as well as the next person, without even looking
at the pictures, turning presidents into
groceries, gasoline, and a coffee or two along
the way. The long, slow flame of intentionality
is harder to feed, and wait on. My purchasing
doesn’t necessarily point to purification.

“Render to God what is God's,” he said.
If the picture of a president points to possession,
the same is true of the image of the Creator.
I own nothing and owe everything; I’m not
the renderer, but the one being rendered: purified,
clarified, flavored (if you will), in a refiner’s fire,
down to the obvious inscription: “In God We Trust.”

Peace,
Milton

Peace,
Milton