advent journal: you say it's my birthday

On this Sunday of Joy during Advent, our children led us in a Posada, which is a tradition from Mexico and other Latin American countries. We had three “inns” set up around the church and the children traveled, following Mary and Joseph, to each door. They knocked and said, in unison, “We must find a place to stay. We are weary and the journey has been long. Perhaps these kind people will let us stay here.” Then half of the congregation sang, “In the name of heaven, I ask you for shelter for my wife is tired and she can go no farther.” The innkeeper then answered the door and told them they were not welcome because they were strangers and not known and the other half of the congregation sang, “You cannot stay here. You are a stranger. You are not welcome here. You must go away.”

We repeated the scene twice, but then they came to the door in front of the altar and this time the innkeeper welcomed them and we all rejoiced. Then the children came down the center aisle and I realized they each had something in their hand given them by the innkeeper: sugar cookies. To paraphrase Ginger’s benediction at the end of the service -- what better way to capture what this season means: Christ is born and have a cookie!

The end of the service was the beginning of celebration for me because today was my fifty-fourth birthday. I knew Ginger had things planned, but I didn’t know what any of them were because our tradition is for the birthday to be a day of surprises. What unfolded was a day of food and friendship, or affirmation and celebration that was astounding. Our former foster daughter, Julie came down from Boston with her girlfriend to be a part of the weekend. We had beignets for breakfast, Turkish food for lunch, Fullsteam beer and various snacks for dinner, and then closed out the night at the restaurant where I used to work. In the gaps along the way, I checked Facebook to find one happy wish from every chapter of my life. Here, at the end of the day, I feel connected, celebrated, affirmed, and loved, loved, loved.

When I have a chance to watch awards shows on television, I often think how wonderful it is for those who act or sing for a living to have chosen a career where people are intentional about handing out awards and affirmation. I wish every career path offered such a chance for that kind of recognition, and for everyone to say thank you to those who have helped them get where they are. My birthday felt like my award show today. And I am filled with gratitude.

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

lenten journal: write up

I’m happy to say I’m beginning to feel better. Not yet one hundred percent, but better. Thanks for the kind words and prayers.

I had a fun thing happen today. The Duke Chronicle is the independent student daily newspaper at the university and they ran a story on three changes in Duke dining services; I’m one of them. They even came up and took a picture. And they said:

Though not a location for a brief meal, the Faculty Commons hopes to cater to a broader audience with the promotion of former line chef Milton Brasher-Cunningham in January. His background and experience are varied and his ideas and management skills will benefit the service, Elizabeth Tornquist, a member of the eatery's staff, wrote in an e-mail.

"We are delighted to have him and feel that he will continue our Executive Chef Amy Tornquist's tradition of serving fresh local foods, prepared with imagination and skill," she said.

I feel like I’m finding a rhythm there and things are going well. Tonight when I went out into the dining room to see how folks were doing, one of the students said, “Dude, you’re the guy in the paper.”

That’s me.

Peace,
Milton

the rest of the story

There’s always something new to learn.

As many times as I’ve either heard or read the parable of The Good Samaritan and the story of Jesus’ visit with Mary and Martha, I’d never thought about the two being connected until Ginger mentioned it in her sermon last Sunday. Both are stories about people stopping along the way and, I suppose, about people who don’t stop.

The parable has always been the easier story for me to take because I can more easily put myself in the role of the guy who stops. I’ve always been attracted to the people at the edges, the ones who feel left out; they are the ones I gravitated to as a youth minister, as a teacher, and in just about any other situation. But Jesus’ visit to the sisters is more problematic. When our house fills up with company, I’m the one in the kitchen while most folks are on the couch talking. I’m not necessarily alone in the kitchen, but I’m working hard to make sure everyone is fed. And I love it. I like swirling around making sure bowls stay filled, food is served hot, and people don’t go away hungry. When I do stop to talk, I always have one ear listening for the timer so I don’t burn whatever is coming out next.

I’m also not much of a meditator. (Is that a word?) If I sit quiet and still for twenty minutes, I fall asleep. I’m thoughtful and reflective, intentional and focused, but I’m not particularly quiet. I think if Jesus stopped by here, I’d be most likely to say, “Come talk to me in the kitchen while I finish the crab dip.” (That’s Ginger’s favorite; I figure he’d like it, too.) So the way I read Jesus’ admonition to Martha is less about her doing and more about her complaining that Mary was just sitting around. Martha doesn’t sound particularly joyful in her hospitality, I must say, in the same way that the religious leaders in the parable were so consumed with duty or privilege that they couldn’t afford to be compassionate. It wasn’t on the schedule.

Garrison Keillor is hitting home runs over at The Writer’s Almanac this week. Today’s poem was by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, whom I’ve quoted before. It sounds like something Jesus might have quoted right alongside of his words in Luke 10.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I looked back at the two stories in Luke and noticed that both are somewhat unfinished. We never hear from the lawyer after Jesus says, “Go and do likewise”; we never hear what Martha says or does after Jesus tells her, “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

At Vacation Bible Camp, Ginger was taking prayer requests from the kids one day when one girl asked that we pray for homeless children. Ginger agreed and talked about how some children live on the streets or in cars. Another little girl said, “People live in their cars?” She was incredulous, so Ginger talked about it some more with the hope that the seed planted in our prayer time would grow kindness in her heart. Certainly, the lawyer original question was intended to be more quiz than conversation. What I hope is he realized he was the guy in the ditch who needed a neighbor as much as anyone. Naomi is right: kindness grows out of sorrow.

My image of how the day was going for Martha when Jesus arrived is she had to improvise. I don’t think they were expecting him, since I don’t imagine he was on a specific itinerary. Based on the tone of her comment about her sister, I also imagine whatever she was preparing to feed Jesus wasn’t going well. Maybe she burned the pita bread or the hummus was runny. Maybe she cut her finger or burned her arm pulling something out of the oven. Maybe she was pissed because she was the only one who knew she was having a hard day. Maybe Jesus was saying, “Why are you taking your stuff out on your sister?” Martha had not yet been able to see, as Naomi says, “the size of the cloth” of kindness.

Jesus counted Mary, Martha, and Lazarus as friends, so I have to believe the conversation didn’t end at the height of the tension where Luke stopped his story. Jesus touched a raw sibling nerve with his words; there was more to be said.

I tried writing a couple of endings and everything I came up with felt forced or trite. What I see as I write is I have a lot at stake in Martha finding some redemption. I know her well; I need for her to come off better than she does. No, it’s not so much about how she appears as needing her to find some healing in the story because I think Jesus’ words must have hurt. She was trying hard and came up short. Somehow, I think that feeling was not unfamiliar to her. Whatever happened, I know Jesus was kind and found a way to say she was the one he was looking for and he needed her to stop just long enough to understand.

Peace,
Milton

acceptance speech

I've got more thoughts running through my head than I can get organized into anything coherent tonight and so I offer this wonderful poem I found today at The Writer's Almanac. The poet is Lynn Powell.

Acceptance Speech

The radio's replaying last night's winners
and the gratitude of the glamorous,
everyone thanking everybody for making everything
so possible, until I want to shush
the faucet, dry my hands, join in right here
at the cluttered podium of the sink, and thank

my mother for teaching me the true meaning of okra,
my children for putting back the growl in hunger,
my husband, primo uomo of dinner, for not
begrudging me this starring role—

without all of them, I know this soup
would not be here tonight.

And let me just add that I could not
have made it without the marrow bone, that blood—
brother to the broth, and the tomatoes
who opened up their hearts, and the self-effacing limas,
the blonde sorority of corn, the cayenne
and oregano who dashed in
in the nick of time.

Special thanks, as always, to the salt—
you know who you are—and to the knife,
who revealed the ripe beneath the rind,
the clean truth underneath the dirty peel.

—I hope I've not forgotten anyone—
oh, yes, to the celery and the parsnip,
those bit players only there to swell the scene,
let me just say: sometimes I know exactly how you feel.

But not tonight, not when it's all
coming to something and the heat is on and
I'm basking in another round
of blue applause.

Peace,
Milton

enough

I have a job interview tomorrow.

Last Saturday I made a cold call on a restaurant that happens to be across the parking lot from the Unemployment Office (excuse me – the Career Center). It’s a funky little place with a really cool menu that runs ads on cable from time to time. As I was walking up, one of the cooks was picking fresh herbs from the bed planted in front of the restaurant. I asked if the chef was in and he told me to speak to the manager because the chef was on vacation. The manager and I had a nice conversation. He took my resume and told me the chef would be back Wednesday and to come back Thursday if no one had called. Later on that afternoon, he called me at home to say he thought I should call the chef at home, which I did. The chef called me back today. He sounds like a great guy and he knows his stuff; he trained at the CIA (that’s Culinary Institute of America, not the spy place). I go in to talk to him tomorrow about a sous chef position.

Six summers ago, I drove around trying to talk my way into a cooking gig. The chef at the little place where I started asked about my experience and I talked about church suppers and pancake breakfasts. A couple of jobs later, I hooked up with a friend who is also a chef and followed him to a couple of places. He is the one I worked with at The Inn. I’ve worked hard to learn my craft and improve my skills and I have still felt like I should put an asterisk at the end of the sentence where I talk about being a chef: (*his friend got him in the door). I am a mixture of confidence and insecurity when it comes to vocational things. I think I always have been.

As much as I know I have the chops to work in any kitchen, the work ethic to do things well, and the willingness to learn what I don’t know, I am surprised that a chef called me about being his assistant because of how I look on paper – not because I know someone who called in a favor, or he’s desperate to fill a position, or he’s feeling unusually compassionate. He thinks I can do the job because I have the experience to do it. I’m not a beginner anymore. I think I have a harder time convincing myself than I do anyone else.

He asked me two questions I found interesting. First, he said, “What area of the kitchen do you feel is your strong point?”

I thought for a few seconds and told him I felt I was a fast learner and I was good at keeping up with details in figuring out how to get the orders out and done well. I know how to look beyond the task that is in front of my face to see what needs to happen next to make things run smoothly. And then I said, “I also love being a part of a team. Working together to make things go well is really fun for me.”

Then he asked, “Are you self-taught?”

Professional cooking is made up of those who went through formal training and those who learned as apprentices without sitting in a classroom. Both are legitimate paths as far as the restaurant business is concerned. He, as I mentioned, was formally trained at the CIA. I would be one of the apprentices.

“Yes,” I answered.

He went on to talk about how most all of the folks in his kitchen were self-taught – and most of them had been with him five or six years. He also talked about how he enjoyed training and teaching people. (I think he must be one of the good guys.) As I’ve reflected on his question as my evening has worn on, I want to go back and answer differently. I’m not self-taught; I’ve been taught by everyone I’ve worked with.

Joao taught me how to make foccacia bread.
Carlos taught me how to make soups.
Kevin taught me how to flip eggs.
Sunichi taught me how to make maki rolls.
Eric taught me how to make a beurre blanc.
Jason taught me how to make Chicken Marsala.
Bill taught me how to test how well a steak is done.
Gigi taught me how to use the Fry-o-lator.
Jose taught me how to run the big dishwasher.
Alfonso taught me how to cut fruit with flair.
Pedro taught me how to make mashed potatoes for 300.
Robert taught me how to run a kitchen . . . and so on.

I’m not self-taught; I just like to learn.

Kasey Chambers is an Australian singer I came across a few years ago. On her album Barricades and Brickwalls she has a song that begins:

Am I not pretty enough
Is my heart to broken
Do I cry too much
Am I too outspoken
Don't I make you laugh
Should I try it harder
Why do you see right through me

Enough is a hard word for me, something that stays mostly out of reach, particularly if I think I’m responsible for proving my value. Very few times in my life have I felt like enough on my own. OK, probably never. If, however, I think of myself as not alone but as standing with my teachers and those whom I have taught, then I can begin to feel differently.

I am enough because I am not alone.

Peace,
Milton

living in time

I am more and more convinced that time doesn’t move in a line.

Even as I make that statement, I can recall one of my seminary professors waxing eloquent about the linear view of time being something that made the Judeo-Christian worldview stand apart from the others: history was going somewhere rather than going in circles.

But here’s the deal: in the middle of our youth mission trip this past week, I got an email message from, Deana, who was in my youth group twenty years ago catching me up on her life and saying thanks for helping her through some hard times. Two decades later, how I feel about teenagers and how I interact with them is not so different. Time has moved, yes, but not in a line. I need a different metaphor. The idea that history, whether public or personal, simply moves from Point A to Point B makes something with more layers than lasagna sound two dimensional. Time is a dimension of its own, with room to move, as the old Sesame Street song used to say,

around and around
around and around
over under and through

In the summer of 1984, my friend Gene (who can be found here) invited me to go to youth camp with his church as camp pastor. One of the things we did was to set up a sound system so we could make announcements and provide a soundtrack for the week. Each morning, he and I got up early and found our way to the microphone to sing an intentionally irritating version of “Morning Has Broken,” which is probably the reason Cat Stevens quit singing and converted to Islam. In the twenty-odd summers since, I’ve kept waking kids with that songs and others, such as this (with apologies to Minnie Ripperton)

waking you is easy ‘cause I’m beautiful
and every time that I do
I just love waking you

And yes, I hit the high notes – which leads me to one of my favorite moments on our trip. The last morning everyone was moving particularly slowly, so I kept singing as I went about my tasks. One of the kids, who woke up not feeling well, came up to me and said, “Your voice is magnified like ten times in my head.”

“Wow!” I answered. “That must be awesome.”

Sometimes I crack myself up. One of the other things I learned from Gene that summer that has stayed with me was the practice of writing affirmation cards. He showed up at camp with enough cards for everyone to write everyone else at least once (and there were three hundred of us), and we did. I’ve parted with a lot of things over the years, but I still have almost every card I’ve ever received. They are treasures.

One of the kids on our trip built an outdoor labyrinth at his church for his Eagle Scout project. The spiritual practice of walking the labyrinth is something that speaks to me and something I’m still learning about.
The use of the labyrinth is older than Christianity and carries in it a sense of time that can carry all the layers. The first time I walked one, I was struck by how I moved all over the circle as I worked my way to the center. I would be walking next to someone and then we would both make turns and be on opposite sides of the circle, moving both together and separately, both ultimately aimed at the center. As long ago and far away as those days at Camp Ozark seem to me, all it takes is one turn singing in the morning and Gene and I are walking side by side once again. Writing affirmation cards draws me close to Deana and others with whom I have shared love and encouragement. To walk a straight line on our planet would bring me back to where I started; I’m not sure time is any different. Whether we’re spending time, saving time, making time, marking time, losing time, or finding time, we go out where we came in: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

One of my favorite singer-songwriters from my college days was B. W. Stevenson. His self-titled album is still one of the best things I own, even if it’s still only on vinyl. When I lived in Fort Worth in the mid-eighties, I saw he was playing in a little club called The Hop. His few radio songs were long gone and he made a living doing small gigs, mostly in Texas. It was a weeknight and I was one of only a handful of people in the room, but he sang like it was a sellout. During a break between sets, he sat down at a booth by himself with a beer and I walked over to say a few words of affirmation. “I’ve been following you since college,” I said.

“Oh!” he replied. “You’re the guy.”

We talked for a bit and I got to say thanks for the songs that meant so much to me. I stayed until he wouldn’t sing anymore and went home. I never saw him again. He died a couple of years later, at 38, of complications after heart surgery. Here’s what he said about time:

well, sorrow brings you loneliness
and pain can bring disgrace
at twenty-one the world
is written on your face
got no one to turn to -
the road is long and low
just look on up to Jesus,
and He can let you know.

you've got to save a little time,
save a little time,
save a little time for love.
save a little time, save a little time,
save a little time for love.

life can bring misfortune
and it can bring you strife,
your mind may want to lash out
at the friends you find in life.
take hold of your senses,
the devil takes his toll
just look on up to Jesus,
and He can let you know.

you’ve got to save a little time,
save a little time,
save a little time for love.
save a little time, save a little time,
save a little time for love.

well, if you see your brother,
and he's without a friend
take hold of his heart and soul
and walk him to the end.
take his mind and try
to make him understand
that man is only man,
but he does the best he can.

you've got to save a little time,
save a little time,
save a little time for love.
save a little time, save a little time,
save a little time for love.

Time is, most of all, the dimension in which love thrives.


Peace,
Milton

a sticker for everyone

Peace,
Milton

a good word

Affirmation is life-giving.

When I was teaching high school, I started putting stickers on vocabulary quizzes (and then on other papers and tests) for good grades. The kids went nuts over them. I was teaching junior Honors Brit Lit and they were clamoring for Sponge Bob stickers. I know how they feel. I started back to Weight Watchers a couple of weeks ago. They give you a star for every five pounds you lose. A small, very disposable, gold star. I got my second one on Tuesday. I think I'm as excited about the little sticker as I am about losing the weight.

A good word goes a long way.

Maggi Dawn affirmed me this week by giving me a Thinking Blogger award. I greatly appreciate it. (I would also like to say thank you to two other folks who did the same while I was writing my Lenten Journal. I intended to follow through after Easter and lost track of your comments.) The award is a meme that began with this post.

One of the things I like about the meme -- besides getting an award (my first) -- is it's designed to foster greater affirmation. Maggi mentioned me as one of five blogs that make her think; my task is to do the same. Here are some folks who feed me:

tgraypots web log is a wonderful mixture of pottery, faith, and a fair amount of pizza, as well as other cool food. Reading Tom's work has led me to some great stuff on learning to eat locally and ethically. The passion and tenderness with which he writes is contagious.

Spilt Milk is a blog I discovered recently. Tee's writing is thoughtful and challenging. She writes about some of the political issues in our world with a personal touch -- particularly when it comes to Christian - Muslim - Jewish relations. Her writings and links took me to both Hometown Baghdad and Raising Yousuf, Unplugged.

Look What Love Has Done is a blog with which I've had a connection almost since I started blogging. She was one of the first people to begin to comment with some regularity. Beth writes beautifully and poignantly about what she is learning about faith and family in these days. Her latest post is about affirming her son. She's a good mom.

Closeted Pastor is a new find for me. Cecilia writes about pastoring and working through not yet being able to come out to her congregation. I'm hopeful that she will find affirmation and encouragement here among the blogs to help her move toward feeling more integrated. I'm thankful I get to be a part of the journey.

Simply Simon is writing about "life, food, faith, and the city" -- the city being Melbourne, Australia. Simon is a professor, writer, cook, and all around interesting guy. There's lots of stuff going on at his place. He's one who helps me to keep paying attention.

There are others that move me (as it is, I managed to sneak in a couple). Today, these are folks I want to affirm as blogs that make me think. I'm grateful for the connections.

Peace,
Milton