day job

I posted this earlier today and then spent some time reading Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook, which led me to do a little revising.

it was good he was so hard at work
there was much to do from where he stood
next to the bags of candy

while his mother browsed the stacks
of cards and books a good distance away
across the wide pine boards

of what was once a tobacco warehouse
now a coffee house and grocery store
he carried two bags at a time

shuffling his baby blue Crocs across the floor
his eyes beaming as bright as his smile
and not once did she ever tell him to stop

she simply received the shipments
from her determined and diminutive deliverer
and kept about her task

until their work was done and it was time to go
she put the bags back in their bucket
and they smiled their way home to a well-deserved nap

Peace,
Milton

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

turn the page

Durham has a lot of good things about it, but a good independent radio station is not one of them. And so I spend my days in the kitchen listening to classic rock and hold the distinction of being the only one in the kitchen for whom the songs were my soundtrack for high school and college. One of the songs that plays daily for reasons I don’t understand is Bob Seger’s droning plea for the masses to have empathy for his rock star life, “Turn the Page.”

here I am out on the road again
there I am up on the stage
there I go playing the star again
there I go turn the page

I mention the song not because I’m in the mood to do a little Bob bashing, but because I’ve been reading and thinking about writing and wonder how different I am from Bob when I use this space to write about what it feels like writing.

here I am back on my Mac again
there I go blogging away . . .

What I’m reading these days is Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write (brought back into my view by my blogging buddy, Simon, who is always worth reading) and she is giving me much to think – and write – about. Here’s the latest paragraph that has hounded me:

[Writing] all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where stand on a rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do-able as picking up a hammer and pounding a nail. Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft. It is a simple and workable thing that can be as steady and reliable as a chore – does that ruin the romance? (35)

Before I answer her question, I have to back up a bit. I have not written as much as I would like over the past couple of months because many nights I haven’t felt like I had something to say. Cameron got me thinking a week or so ago when she said,

Writing is about getting something down, not thinking something up. . . . We can either “think a plot up” or we can “jot a plot down.” We can either “think of something to write about” or we can write about what we happen to be thinking about. We can either demand we write well or we can settle more comfortably into writing down what seems to want to come through us – good, bad, or indifferent. (10-11)

She then quotes Henry Miller:

“Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.” (11)

Ginger and I have been working on the room in our house that is our shared creative space. A home office, perhaps; we prefer to call it the studio. The biggest task continues to be to find a place for everything, which means, first of all, we have to go through the stacks of stuff that have lived on the floor now for some time. I spent the morning and part of this afternoon going through stacks of papers and old journals and, with Cameron’s words ringing in my ears, realized I’ve had seasons when I have been a better listener to my life than I appear to have been over these days when I felt I had nothing to say. I learned – again – I am a better writer when I speak in concert with my listening and offer harmony to the melody that is already playing, if you will.

Yesterday’s poem provides a good example. I found this poem on the Writer’s Almanac several days ago and noticed it came from a book of poems by Charles Darling called The Saints of Diminished Capacity. I wrote the phrase down in my journal because it was so rich and because it seemed to describe those close to me who are dealing with fresh grief and are having to play hurt through these days. When I sat down to write yesterday, I understood – again – what Cameron meant when she said we write things down, not make things up. I just wrote what I saw and heard, and what I felt and then I spent some time doing my best to craft the words, to revise and edit, to make my offering an adequate reflection of what I had seen and heard.

One of the snippets I found today reminded me of an afternoon I was walking across Boston Common. A guy who looked as though he had spent the night in the park was standing up on a small brick wall playing his guitar and singing. As I walked past, he was singing these words by James Taylor:

everyday I wake up just the same
waiting for something new
every night I have myself to blame
for dreams that haven’t come true
especially today I’m feeling blue

If I had been writing the soundtrack for a movie I couldn’t have scripted it any better. Sunday, in her sermon, Ginger recounted an experience she and I had walking through Davis Square, one of our favorite Somerville haunts. There was a homeless man sitting on the curb and and as we passed he said, rather loudly, “Change.”

I blurted back without thinking, “I’m trying. I’m trying,” as Ginger reached for coins in her pocket.

Writing draws me because it is such a wonderful metaphor for living, as much as anything. Listening makes me a better writer; listening makes me a better human being, as well. You get the idea. Our choice of words make a difference. If I write (or live) feeling that I have a story to tell, I’m not sure that lasts very long. None of us likes to be told things very often. But from my listening to life, I have a story to share, the way we share sandwiches or rides or sunny afternoons, then I may be on to something strong enough to make you, well, turn the page.

Peace,
Milton

saints of diminished capacity

I only saw the words written,
requiring me to infer tone;
to assume either compassion
or conceit; to decide if the poet
mimed quotation marks when
he said, “diminished capacity,” --
or saints, for that matter --
if he even said the words out loud.

Either way, the phrase is
fragrant with failure, infused
with what might have been,
what came and went,
what once was lost . . .
and now is found faltering,
struggling, stumbling,
still hoping, as saints do,
failure is not the final word.

Forgiveness flows best from
brokenness; the capacity for
love is not diminished by
backs bowed by pain, or
hearts heavy with grief.
Write this down: the substance
of things hoped for fuels
those who walk wounded:
we are not lost; we are loved.

Peace,
Milton

this land is . . .

I know I've already mentioned Woody Guthrie this week, but he comes to mind for me every Independence Day because he wrote my favorite song about America, "This Land is Your Land." He actually wrote the song in response to "God Bless America."

Here is one of my favorite covers of the song by Bruce Springsteen singing all the verses -- even the ones they left out when they taught it to us at school.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Peace,
Milton

a handmade life

“It’s what’s inside the words,” she said;
“Inside heart there’s an ear and there’s art.”

After reading, I couldn’t help but look
for words among the bread and vegetables
that made up our simple supper last night,
both of us finally home after days
that felt longer than the time passed.
I couldn’t find God in the green beans,
or love in the tomatoes; no fun in foccacia;
not enough meal to make meaning.
But that's not the last word, is it?

The tomatoes tasted like the smile
of the brown baby at the farmer’s market;
the crisp sweet corn spelled summer
without letters; and the bread,
dipped in the olive oil we keep
for special occasions, was leavened
and flavored by all the suppers
we have shared together, fed
by the mystery in the mundane:
another day in our handmade life.

Peace,
Milton

god's promise

The words are Woody Guthrie's; the voice is Ellis Paul's. I pass them both along to you with gratitude.

I didn't promise you skies painted blue
not all colored flowers all your days through
I didn't promise you sun with no rain
joys without sorrows, peace without pain

All that I promise is strength for this day,
rest for my worker, and light on your way
I give you truth when you need it, my help from above
Undying friendship, my unfailing love

I never did promise you crowns without trials,
food with no hard sweat, your tears without smiles
hot sunny days without cold wintry snows
no victory without fighting, no laughs without woes

All that I promise is strength for this day,
rest for my worker, and light on your way
I give you truth when you need it, my help from above
Undying friendship, my unfailing love

I sure didn't say I'd give you heaven on earth
a life with no labor no struggles no deaths
no earthquakes no dry spells, no fire flames, no droughts
no slaving, no hungers, no blizzards, no blights

All that I promise is strength for this day,
rest for my worker, and light on your way
I give you truth when you need it, my help from above
Undying friendship, my unfailing love

I promise you power, this minute, this hour,
the power you need when you fall down and bleed
I give you my peace and my strength to pull home
My love for all races, my creeds, and all kinds

My love for my races, my creeds of all kinds
My love for my saviors, all colors, all kinds
My love for my races, my creeds of all kinds
My dancers, my prancers, my colors, all kinds,
My saviors, my flavors, my creeds of all kinds.

Peace,
Milton

I have been quiet, I know

These are days that call for me to reflect, to hold my words and thoughts close, to share with those I can see in person, to let things ruminate and mature before they become public. There is no major crisis, no depression (thank God), nothing more than days that call me to listen more than speak, to attend more than act.

I have been quiet, I know; but it’s a good kind of quiet.

Peace,
Milton

to a friend, on the death of her father

there are days where life
seems to stretch out like a
great plain, endless expanse
melting into the horizon

this is not one of those days

today is a fresh amputee
cut down to a stump of sadness
the expected assassinated
while we slept and awakened

to the now and the not here

let us cling to each other
like refugees like orphans
he is not here but we are
we are here together

and we cannot stop the pain

only share it and trust
as we hold each other
that we are being held
across death and dimensions

by the beautiful broken hands of God

Peace,
MIlton

music to start the summer

One of my favorites: "They say that these are not the best of times, but they're the only times I've ever known . . ."



Peace,
Milton

old friends

Ginger and I have spent today unpacking.

Yes, I know we’ve been in Durham for a year and a half, and in our house for over a year. But we’ve had a stack of boxes sitting in the shed in the back yard all that time waiting for us to make room: boxes of books and CDs and the stuff I have to paint with and to make cards and candles. Now things are out of the boxes. The books and such have found shelves on which to sit, but the studio/office is filled with stacks of papers and boxes of paints and paper scraps. And then there are the boxes of photographs and affirmation cards – the real treasures.

In the summer of 1983, I went to youth camp with First Baptist Richardson, thanks to my friend, Gene Wilkes, who was the Youth Minister. The first morning of camp during the Sunshine Show, which was thirty or forty-five minutes of music blared across the camp to let everyone wake up after breakfast, the kids began to gather in the worship area and several of them went to the microphones and began calling names for mail call. The cards they were handing out were “affirmation cards,” notes they wrote to one another with messages of encouragement, hope, and friendship. When I moved on the be Youth Minister at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, I took the practice with me, and then on to churches where Ginger served in Winchester and Marshfield, Massachusetts, and my last stint as the Youth Guy at First Congregational Church in Hanover.

And I think I’ve hung on to almost every last card that I received. If I don’t have them all, I have most of them. I know. I found them again today, along with stacks of pictures that flooded my mind and heart with stories and memories.

And music. Along with the pictures, I found some CDs, among which was Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends:

A time it was
It was a time
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you

When we studied the grief process during my CPE days, they told us a normal grief cycle lasts eighteen months to three years. Though we landed in Durham doing about seventy-five miles an hour, both starting work within forty-eight hours of driving into town, and finding ourselves in a place where we feel a great deal of resonance and acceptance, we left behind almost two decades of friends and memories in Massachusetts, which is where we had spent all but about three months of our married lives. Perhaps the boxes had to sit in the shed until we were ready to unpack the last -- and some of the most self-defining -- things we own.

I’m not sure we could have gotten to it any sooner. And we tried.

Thumbing through the pictures and affirmation cards helped me realize what has replaced the grief is gratitude. I still miss Massachusetts. This week, after reading Facebook notes about old friends heading to camp again, I still miss it. It’s not so much that the yearning for disappears as, it seems, the grief is replaced by gratitude for the tether of love and memory. In the face of the hard realities that we cannot all be together in the same place and life moves on just as we do, I find myself sitting with stacks of colored index cards and photographs that remind me there is a dimension to our existence that runs deeper or wider or higher or whatever word would describe a direction we cannot completely comprehend that lets those words and images that are now years old still have life. Real life in real time.

One of our new favorite TV shows is In Plain Sight, which centers around Mary Shannon, a US Marshall who works with the Federal Witness Protection Program. It is a show about people who have to move without being able to take their memories, or anything else for that matter, with them. A couple of weeks ago, the show ended with this paragraph of monologue that has stayed with me:

Before the Big Bang, before time itself, before matter, energy, velocity, there existed a single immeasurable state called yearning. This is the special force that on the day before there were days obliterated nothing into everything. It is the unseen strings tying planets to stars. It is the maddening want we feel from first breath to last light.

I’m grateful I am able to miss those with whom I used to share laughs and tears, meals and movies and the strange rituals of friendship. I’m grateful for the yearning to be with them again, because the creative power of that love is stronger than the grief that comes with loss, strong enough to let me unpack those memories in my new home, my new place, and begin to write new messages of love and hope to the people who surround me here.



Peace,
Milton

question

If you were speaking in parables
this afternoon, would you still talk
about seeds and birds and trees?

You see, what we know of farming
are supermarket shelves of Costa Rican
bananas and Peruvian asparagus;

a flower box of basil in the yard,
summer trips to the farmer’s market.
(Why is it so expensive?)

In our world of uniform tomatoes,
our apples sit, shiny and stacked in rows,
our Blackberries know nothing of time.

We fly so fast down the highway
we fail to see the clusters of muscadine
on the fence line, wild onions in the ditch.

I’m answering my own question. True
theology isn’t thirsting for a technological
upgrade: it’s still God 1.0: Christological kudzu.

Tell me the story again, in this summer
of kale and catastrophe, greens and grace;
and I will do my best to see and hear.

Peace,
Milton

thanks for the music

I was checking up on a few things before heading for bed when I saw that Kenny Rankin, a singer-songwriter and awesome guitarist whom I have followed over the years, died earlier in the week from lung cancer. Here then, in the closing minutes of the day, I offer my gratitude for the music he brought to my life and offer you a chance to hear one of my favorites, “Haven’t We Met.”



Peace,
Milton

nicodemus

When he first heard the words,
he was the first to hear them:
“You must be born again.”
He was old and the metaphor
muddled his mind: go back
into my mother’s womb--
at this age?

Jesus, however, was not about
to forsake his role as midwife.
There in the darkness, he called
the old man to think of something
other than dying, to let his heart
hear he was the one whom
God so loved.

When my grandfather died,
he was only five years older
than I am right now, maybe no
older than Nicodemus that night.
What kills us all in bits and pieces
is living as though love is earned;
birth is a gift.

The God who birthed the universe
has chosen to spend everyday
since in labor, in the pain of
birth and rebirth, a tenacious
expression of love, a ferocious
gift of grace we cannot deserve,
only receive.

Peace,
Milton

finding words

There are days I go out looking for words and, then, there are days that words come out looking for me, or at least stand hitchhiking by the road I’m on such that I can’t help but stop and pick them up. Today was a hitchhiking day. On my usual wandering through The Writer’s Almanac, I found this poem by Julie Cadwallader-Staub, who (from what I could find) lives in Vermont, works for a nonprofit, and writes poetry. Today was her first time to be selected by Garrison Keillor, and I am so glad he chose to let her poem flag me down this evening.

Reverence

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat

and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.

In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:

my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.

The phrase that made me pull over and stop was “that same utter certainty of the goodness of life” because I’m acutely aware of the flow of sadness and struggle in the lives of so many folks around me these days. And I’m also aware of my propensity to allow the minutiae of my life to build up into a layer of funk and frustration that blinds me from gratitude. Our friends Lori and Terry came over for dinner last night. Lori was talking about the caladiums starting to bloom in their yard and Terry, who had spent the day power washing the mold and mildew off the side of their house, said he didn’t see the flowers because he was too fixated on the “gunk.”

“Once you start looking for it, you can get obsessed,” he said.

But he had his harmonicas with him and I pulled out my guitar and we played and sang our way to a couple of cicada moments, telling stories and sharing laughter late into the evening, giving us a chance to brush up against the goodness and lay the gunk aside, even if only for a few hours.

One of the questions I regularly ask myself is, “Why does my faith matter to me?” Why am I a Christian, a believer, a follower of Jesus? What difference does it make? (Perhaps that last one is better asked, “What difference do I let it make?”) For all of the great sweeping answers I might give about the fate of the world, I’m mostly asking on a day-t0-day level: what does it matter that I am a Christian while I chop celery and onions?

The poet reminded me of the answer: that same utter certainty of the goodness of life.

I’m not claiming hope as a uniquely Christian possession, and I am saying, to paraphrase an old hymn, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus. (Wow. I’m not sure this blog has ever sounded quite that evangelical.) One of the underpinning message of the Incarnation is it is good to be human. We were birthed out of God’s imagination, breathed into existence as evidence of that same utter certainty of the goodness of life. Jesus came into this world as a human being to call us to be fully human: full of grace and gratitude, awake to all that God has for us to see and do. That sense of goodness doesn’t disregard the suffering or overlook the grief, but it does say I am here to do more than get mired down in the details or let my heart get covered over with gunk.

In my ramblings, I’m afraid I might be weaving two or three strands into a confusing cord (chord?), so I want to be clear. I am, as I said, aware of several close to me who are hurting deeply for various and very serious reasons. I’m not saying they are covered with gunk. I am saying the poem today did a little power washing of its own to remind me how easy it is for my eyes to get gunked up such that I can’t see those who need so desperately for me to remember I can be a carrier of compassion and redemption, should I choose to be the human being I was created to be. I, like the cicadas and the fireflies, have a chance to offer a glimpse of that utter goodness to loved ones sitting in the dark if I am willing to look at my life as more a gift and a call and less as a series of frustrations, which is another way of saying I can choose to incarnate my faith, to let reverence mix with amazement. Or not.

I woke up this morning with an old hymn in my head and found myself singing in my mind:

stand up stand up for Jesus
ye soldiers of the cross
life high the royal banner
ye must not suffer loss
from victory unto victory
his army shall he lead
till every foe is vanquished
and Christ is Lord indeed

The odd thing is we didn’t sing that hymn last night and the whole battle metaphor doesn’t do much for me spiritually. With all my heart I know we must suffer loss after loss after loss if we stand up and follow Jesus. My faith isn’t worth much if it’s focused on looking for a fight. I’m grateful, then, that this poem flagged me down in the waning hours of this early evening and asked me to hear a different song, a cicadian rhythm of redemption accompanied with a firefly light show inviting me to welcome the gathering dark with reverence and amazement.

You’re welcome to ride along; there’s plenty of room.

Peace,
Milton

P.S. -- There are new recipes here and here.

shameless commerce

Last year I published a book through Lulu.com called Seven Summers at the Beach that included poetry and recipes from this blog as a way of saying goodbye and thank you for our years in Massachusetts. Lulu was hard to find and the shipping charges were outlandish. This week, however, Lulu informed me that my book was selected to be sold in the Amazon Marketplace and you can now find it here for a more reasonable shipping price.

Should you ever desire a copy.

Peace,
Milton