it's a miracle

We talked about miracles at our church Sunday, as did most folks who follow the common lectionary since the Gospel passage was about Jesus feeding the five thousand. Ginger asked a group of us to help pantomime the scripture as she read it; our drama included passing bowls of Pepperidge Farm rainbow goldfish throughout the congregation.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: before we acted out the miracle, we saw one.

We had a baptism Sunday. Court is about four months old and is an absolutely beautiful little boy. He has a full head of hair, blue eyes the color of the sky on your favorite late summer afternoon, defined facial features that make him look more like a little boy than a baby, and a smile that demands nothing less than a smile in return. He also pays attention, as though he’s storing it all up for future reference. As he stood with his parents at the front of the church, Court’s mother held him with his back to her chest so he could see everyone. One of her arms was wrapped around his waist and the other supported his bottom. As Ginger read through the vows, Court followed every word. When Ginger asked of his parents, “Will you remind him that he is wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved?” Court waved his arms and legs up and down and giggled as if the Spirit was bursting out of every part of him. In that moment, the Word once more became flesh right in the middle of us all.

A few minutes later, we were up acting out the Bible story. After we collected the bowls with the leftover goldfish and finished the scripture reading, Ginger said what she says most Sundays at that moment: “May God grant us wisdom and understanding of this passage.” Maybe it stood out more this week because we were talking about  a miracle and miracles are, in a way, like jokes: they lose something when you start trying to explain them. The gospel account doesn’t give much information on how the single lunch turned into a catered affair, only that there was more than enough food when all was said and eaten. Somewhere in her sermon, Ginger quoted from a hymn we sing regularly:

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

The song is a perfect soundtrack for this discussion because any miracle from the Feeding of the Five Thousand to fireflies starts as something God sees first -- and then shares. As I held that thought, Ginger made an interesting statement: “Miracles are about timing and awareness.”

I thought of Court waving his wings at the exact moment Ginger said he was worthy to be loved.

I thought of Pentecost where some heard the mighty rush of the Spirit and some only felt the wind blow.
And then I thought of a story Madeleine L’Engle told in one of her books about the couple who brought their second child home from the hospital still a little unsure of how he would be received by the older sister. As the evening progressed, the little girl demanded time alone with her new baby brother. The parents stood at the door as the girl approached the crib and said to her brother, “Tell me about God; I think I’m forgetting.”

Then Ginger said, “Rather than try to explain miracles, let us learn to live with them and assist them.” She went on to reference Annie Sullivan and her work with Helen Keller, which was chronicled in the play The Miracle Worker, one of Ginger’s favorites. Annie worked hard for the miracle of Helen’s comprehension to happen, just as the disciples worked the crowds somehow in a way that everyone was more than satisfied.

We finished our service with Communion. We vary the way in which we serve the meal. This time we lined up and came to the front to receive the bread and the cup through Intinction. Ginger and Carla and the deacons who were serving stood in front of the line of bowls filled with goldfish and offered us the Bread and the Cup; when the service was over, the left over bread and the goldfish both made reappearances in coffee hour, along  with Court and his family.

Ii took another piece of bread and gave thanks for both the timing and awareness that let me in on the miracles around me. Here’s hoping I can be as awake and aware more often.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: the mystery of the mundane

Look wherever you can find the information and you will find that our Sunday morning service at Pilgrim United Church of Christ begins at 10:30. Though it is not written down anywhere, most everyone in the room knows the service ends at 11:30, which is when it is time for coffee hour and whatever else the day holds. Our second hands are the metronome that too often sets the pace of our spiritual practice. And we are far from alone. Every church I have ever been a part of knew what time church was supposed to be over.

At ten-thirty this morning, the worship leaders processed in and Ginger asked those who had announcements to come forward and do them as briefly as possible. Those of us who had information to share followed her instructions, but the announcements didn’t finish until 10:45. After our opening hymn, several members of the Church Council made a very necessary and well done presentation about our budget, which took four minutes. We also welcomed a new member today, which added an extra litany to our time. In between those things, we lighted the Advent candles, confessed our sins, sang fragments of several hymns, followed our children as they led us in giving as they do on Communion Sundays, offered our joys and concerns during prayer time, took up the offering, and listened to Ginger’s meditation. By the time we got to the Communion Table the hour was all used up.

11:34.

Ginger and the other worship leaders did a great job of not keeping time and not allowing our time at the Table to become the spiritual equivalent of hitting the drive through window and eating in the car because we were running late. We took our time, ate and drank and sang and prayed together, and then we went out to the Fellowship Hall and the rest of the day – at 11:49. Amen.

In all three UCC churches to which I have belonged we made a distinction, and an important one, between gathering and preparing for worship. The flow moves from the prelude to the announcements to some gathering word and then the introit, which means worship has begun. I find the distinction meaningful and important because it calls us to particular focus and reverence and yet, this morning I found myself wondering how the divide affects our sense of time.

Though only one of the announcements pertained to worship specifically, the others had to do with our daily life together and all the mundane details and activities that go into being church. And it all takes time. When I sat down to write tonight, I looked up the origins of the word mundane:

mundane
late 15c., from M.Fr. mondain (12c.), from L. mundanus "belonging to the world" (as distinct from the Church), from mundus "universe, world," lit. "clean, elegant"; used as a transl. of Gk. khosmos (see cosmos) in its Pythagorean sense of "the physical universe" (the original sense of the Gk. word was "orderly arrangement").

A word that began as something that carried the idea of elegance along side of the sense of belonging to the world has evolved into a word that means banal and imaginative, as though being of this world takes heaven out of the equation. Yet, as we retell the story of the Incarnation, the truth is it is filled with mundane details. What it took to get Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem was one mundane step after another. By the time the herald angels sang to the shepherds they had already finished a day full of tasks belonging to the world. Can it not be that the mudane things of life – theirs and ours – are as significant as the magnificent and the mysterious, should we choose to have eyes to see that God is in those very details?

We are beginning our second week of Advent: of waiting, of patience, of wondering, of making room, of preparing. It all takes time. Precious time.

One of my tasks this afternoon was to make a soup for the week. I made minestrone, which meant there was a good deal of preparing to do. I spent a good half hour dicing bacon and onions and carrots and celery and zucchini, and then straining the can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes and crushing them by hand before I added them to the other vegetables and added the homemade turkey stock from the bones of our Thanksgiving bird that had simmered on the stove for about eight hours one day last week.

Any dish that is well done depends on the most mundane of preparations. The cutting and dicing and peeling are all married to the heart and art of the chef’s inspiration and his or her commitment to take time, or make time, or make room for the dish to be all that it can be. Good cooking takes time, as does good worship, good fellowship, and good living.

The life God has called us to live is far more both/and than it is either/or. Rather than divide our lives into what is worldly and what is transcendent, let us live in the creative tension at the heart of the Incarnation that saw this mundane human existence as something worth becoming.

Peace,
Milton

an open letter to jim wallis

Dear Mr. Wallis:

Yesterday, you published a post on your blog articulating why your magazine refused to publish an ad from the “Believe Out Loud” campaign, which calls for the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks in our congregational life. In explaining your choice you said, in part:

But these debates have not been at the core of our calling, which is much more focused on matters of poverty, racial justice, stewardship of the creation, and the defense of life and peace. These have been our core mission concerns, and we try to unite diverse Christian constituencies around them, while encouraging deep dialogue on other matters which often divide. Essential to our mission is the calling together of broad groups of Christians, who might disagree on issues of sexuality, to still work together on how to reduce poverty, end wars, and mobilize around other issues of social justice.

As one who grew up Southern Baptist and found Sojourners to be people who stretched and challenged my concept of who I was called to be in this world as a follower of Christ, I am deeply disappointed by your words because they lack the courage and conviction that I’ve seen in your work for justice over the years. I’m sorry to see you, well, play politics and play it safe. At least that’s how it feels to me -- and I know from reading just a few of the comments on your blog that I am not the only one that feels this way. Had the issues regarding equal acceptance and equal marriage were being drawn along racial lines, would you have written the same paragraph?

Last week on Grey’s Anatomy, Callie, one of the doctors who was about to get married, and who was also lesbian, was doubting herself and her commitment to the one she loved because her parents had walked out on the wedding since “the church” would not sanction it. Miranda, one of my favorite characters, challenged her to stay true to her commitment. “The church has a lot of catching up to do with God,” she said. Her words rang in my ears as I read your post.

You are falling behind.

None of us has the luxury of deciding what parts of God’s calling we are going to live out. I understand that we all have interests and abilities that perhaps lead us into one area or another with greater emphasis, but cannot decide, as you have done, that we won’t take up an issue because it’s too controversial or it might affect our ability to raise awareness – or funds – in other areas. Your work in fighting against the injustice of war and poverty is important and valuable. Yet how can we deal only with economic poverty and not come to terms with the spiritual bankruptcy that allows us to discriminate against GLBTQ folks in Jesus’ name? If we, who have the choice to say it doesn’t affect us or it is not our top concern, do not make it a vital issue in our lives how will things ever change? You advocate for the poor because you know their voices will not be heard on their own. Does that stance not demand a universal application?

You are right to think that taking a stand will cost you. Trying to not have to take a stand will cost you more. I also understand, as you say, that not all of us who call ourselves Christian agree on this issue, just as Christians have been divided each time they have had to catch up with God when it comes to including and loving one another. At this crucial intersection of faith and justice, please don’t settle for playing it safe. Whatever you deem your priorities, who knows that you are in this world for such a time as this.

Peace,
Milton

faith at full steam

I’m a regular.

If Fullsteam Brewery were casting a remake of Cheers, I’d be in the running for the role of Norm. I don’t drink nearly as much as he did, but when I walk in, they know me. And I love it.

I’m also a regular at my church.

My friend, Jimmy – AKA my favorite carpenter-beekeeper-teacher-pastor-libertarian-crazy man often wonders aloud why we in the institutional church don’t get that we would reach more people if we were more, well, pub like. As long as I’m referencing Cheers, you remember 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
our troubles are all the same
you want to go where
everybody knows your name

A Texas pastor friend of Jimmy’s was with us for our now regular Friday afternoon gatherings at Fullsteam and said, “They accused Jesus of being a glutton and a wine bibber and then, when it came right down to it, what did he tell us to do to remember him? Eat and drink.”

His point is cute, clever, and fairly well-worn, even in the Baptist circles where he abides. I can’t claim much originality either in the analogy between pub and parish. Still, finding my way to Fullsteam has brought it alive for me again. Something about the room makes people want to gather there – and they do, in all sorts of connections. Our neighborhood, which backs up on the brewery, had a happy hour there last week, inviting also the Only Burger truck to join us, and we had over fifty folks, along with children and dogs, talking and chewing and drinking and relishing the time together. And I felt there like I want to feel when I walk into coffee hour at church.

No – I felt there the way I wish people felt when they visit our church and walk into coffee hour.

I love going to church and I love that is a place where I feel known and feel connected. But there is a difference between parish and pub and I think that difference is akin to trying to write a good poem when you’re carrying an agenda: it’s not that you can’t, but it’s damn hard work. At Fullsteam, the point is to get together; church can become getting together for a point, or a project, or something that feels heavier than simply being gathered together.

I am not required to think much about how to keep the doors open at Fullsteam while I’m there. Listen to the conversations at most any church coffee hour, and a fair amount of them – especially during this traditional stewardship season – revolve around how to keep our beloved institution going. The conversations are well intentioned and even necessary, to a point, and we can end up creating a place where it can feel as though you don’t want everyone to know your name because they will assign you to a committee.

A couple of Sundays ago in church, one of our members made a presentation of an historical church document she had found and had also taken the care and initiative to restore and reframe. Apologetically she declared, “I just did it. I didn’t go through any committees or boards.”

A knowing laughter rippled through the congregation.

In most every church I’ve been a part of, we do a weird thing when it comes to stewardship: we start to talk about the church as if it were not us, as though it were a foreign entity – an institution: “Give to the church,” we say; “If we want the church to be able to carry on,” we add, as though we weren’t the church itself, but instead are giving to something akin to the Red Cross or NPR. One church where I served led into the weekly offering by saying, “For the work of the church . . .”

And yet, our children sing,

I am the church
you are the church
we are the church together . . .

Sounds more like a pub song than an institutional anthem to me.

We are the Body of Christ, the incarnation of God’s love for these days called, as Ginger invites us to do each Sunday, to breathe in the breath of God and breathe out the love of God. We are the hands and feet and eyes and ears and arms and legs of Christ – of the one who ate and drank with people and rarely formed committees. The community we are creating is one born of the kind of explosive joy and grace that would choose an unknown peasant girl to bring Love into the world, drawing in everyone. And, in the week by week living out of our community, we often become connected primarily by the responsibilities we put on one another and church becomes serious business.

And church as business becomes the working metaphor.

I will be the first to admit business is not my strength and I’m not trying to throw the accountant out with the bath water, yet I wonder what we are missing when we think of church as a business – an entity other than ourselves – when it comes to how we share our money with one another, because that is what it means to be the Body of Christ: to share, rather than to give. We share our dreams, our sorrows, our ideas, our mistakes, and our money. We do it best, I think, without using last year’s giving records as a reference, or depending on the government to give us a tax deduction. When we give, we give to God, to one another: we are funding faith, not donating to charity.

We are the church. Together.

It wasn’t the room that made Norm feel at home at Cheers, but the way they called his name, and the way he knew they would be waiting for him. Of course, it was also a chance for him to toss one of his great one-liners – my personal favorite:

Sam: “Norm! How’s it going?”
Norm: “It’s a dog eat dog world, Sammy, and I’m wearing Milk Bone underwear.”

Aren’t we all. Here, on the cusp of Advent, I want to walk into Fellowship Hall and remember the Body of Christ that inhabits our stack of cinder blocks is born of extravagance, of brilliance, of unabashed creativity, of unrestrained inclusivity, of resilient hope, and redemptive failure. I want to remember that Jesus wasn’t joking when he said, “Consider the lilies.” I want to live thankfully, congregationally, joyful and triumphant. I want to share our gifts, our belongings, and our faith at full steam.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- I'm on a roll: here's another new recipe.

sunday sonnet #12

The lectionary it seems uses the last few weeks before Advent to dish out some difficult passages. This morning's came from Haggai.

The children sang, “If you’re happy clap your hands”
and Ginger gave a nod to “Glory Days,”
We sang “Wayfaring Stranger” with piano – not a band
and then wrestled with the prophet’s turn of phrase

as he talked about the Temple and replacing old with new,
that we’ve been called to what we can’t expect;
clinging to control we, as the faithful, cannot do
and still hope our dry bones God will resurrect.

Haggai hits hard with a simple proclamation:
Glory Days, they’re gonna pass you by;
for memory is more than the seed of resignation,
the future more than a mansion in the sky.

Temples built of volition and intention
host folks filled with compassion and redemption.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. Since it made the sermon, I might as well let it end the post as well.

lenten journal: the church uncomfortable

I continued my reading of Nora Gallagher’s Practicing Resurrection and only got about five pages in when I a quote that brought the rest of the day rushing back to me.

A spiritual director told me once that God is found on the edge of things, in the margins. About a drunk who sleeps on Trinity’s porch he said, “You can ask him not to drink on the porch but you can’t ask him to leave. He lives in the part that makes the church uncomfortable and that’s where Jesus lives.”

We had a workshop on stewardship this morning at church. Eighteen of us gathered around the tables in the Fellowship Hall to listen to Jena Roy, a friend from Massachusetts, as she challenged us to look at how we see ourselves, who we wish we could become, what we worry about when it comes to our church, and what we would change. The group was engaged and engaging, working hard to listen to one another and to share honestly, and the morning was full of good things that left us with even more questions. And that’s a good thing.

We are a relatively small church (about a hundred and fifty active members), and we are a theologically liberal church that works hard to put hands and feet to our faith: we would be one of those “social justice” churches that frightens Glen Beck. As we listed the things that we saw as strengths of our congregation and then moved on to “stumbling blocks” and “opportunities,” we didn’t come up with three distinct lists. What were strengths to some were the stuff stumbling blocks were made of, and most everything provided the opportunity to make ourselves uncomfortable, which is where Gallagher’s words took me even though she was talking about something completely different.

The limits of our language come into play when we talk about our relationship to church because we use the same word for the physical building and geographical location that we use for the spiritual community we call the Body of Christ. We don’t have another way to describe what we do on Sunday morning other than to say, “I’m going to church,” but the separation in that sentence makes it problematic, at some level, when we want to say (0r sing), “We are the church.” When we talk about going to church, we think of it as a place of comfort and warmth, which is right and good, but when we talk about being the church we have to be willing to be uncomfortable.

As the conversation moved around the table, one person commented that we didn’t do our members a favor by suggesting they give two percent of their income to the church. “We’re letting ourselves off easy,” she said. Another, who is currently looking for work, said she has realized in the midst of her job search that, for the first time, she is taking into account the effect the job will have on the time on her life in church. “I’ve never thought of things this way before,” she said. The two comments came together for me in that being the church means we are willing to change the way we live to be a part: the way we spend money, the way we use our time, and even what we do for a job.

Part of the life of any institution is a push for self-perpetuation. The church is not exempt from falling into the pattern of using most of our energy to “keeping the doors open.” The call of the gospel is not to self-perpetuation, however, but to spend ourselves in the present, to not hold back. (Consider the lilies.) Our assembling ourselves together is, almost by definition, at cross-purposes with itself, pun intended. (Lose your life to find it.) And we haven’t even gotten to the relational energy it takes to be with one another. Most all of the epistles that make up the last half of the New Testament were written to deal with problems in the early church, with the questions and quagmires that grew out of trying to live together in Jesus’ name. The issues we raised around the table this morning were ours, but they were by no means original. This is the part of the church where drunks sleep and Jesus lives, where getting together matters more that getting my way, listening is a crucial incarnation of love, giving our offering is an act of discipleship and not a charitable donation, and committing ourselves to one another is more important that getting our way. After all, we are not a civic organization or a book club; we are the church.

Tomorrow night marks the last night of this particular menu at the Durham restaurant. Those who come to dinner on Tuesday will get a whole new menu of offerings. For those of us in the kitchen, it means coming into the same room to prep and cook, but to do so with new ingredients and new recipes, to set up the line differently, and to learn new patterns of cooperation with each other. The change is good, important, and uncomfortable work, and it’s the way the restaurant stays fresh. The church, like the restaurant, has its seasons, whether we’re talking about the liturgical calendar or the ebb and flow of life, and might do well to appropriate the metaphor. We might not have to ditch the whole menu, but we need a steady diet of change and choices that challenge us to see with fresh eyes and learn new patterns of faithfulness and compassion.

Our workshop this weekend was a new item on our church menu. I’m grateful for the work that went into making it happen, for those who gave their time to be together, and for the freedom we gave each other to made uncomfortable that we might see with fresh eyes where Jesus lives among us.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: what the kids said

I can’t say I have ever heard God speak out loud, but I think I’ve come close.

Whatever God’s voice actually sounds like, I think I come close to hearing it when our children lead worship. Last Sunday, they led our call to worship by lining up in front of the Communion table and singing with holy gusto:

I am the church you are the church
we are the church together
all who follow Jesus all around the world
we are the church together

the church is not a building
the church is not a steeple,
the church is not a resting place
the church is a people

we're many kinds of people
with many kinds of faces
all colors and all ages
from all times and places

and when the people gather
there's singing and there's praying
there's laughing and there's crying
sometimes, all of it saying

I am the church you are the church
we are the church together
all who follow Jesus all around the world
we are the church together

Their singing was evidence of the Incarnation, shown in the abandon with which they inhabited the words they sang and the tenacity of their hand gestures; they weren’t fooling around. As they began our Communion service, they called us to incarnate our faith not only as we passed the Bread and the Cup, but also as we passed the Peace during the service and as we passed the snacks at Coffee Hour. I could hear them singing again as I read the words of Augustine at lunch today, quoted by Nora Gallagher:

You are the body of Christ and its members. . . . It is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table. And it is to what you are that you reply. Amen. (23)

“The Word became flesh,” John says at the beginning of his gospel. Paul’s use of the body of Christ as the metaphor for the church suggests the Word stayed flesh. As Mary Oliver says, “The Spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest.” We are the Church, the Body, the Word still made flesh: Love with skin on. Together, that is.

I love the line in the song that says, “The church is not a resting place.” I remember my father telling a story years ago of a person leaving church one Sunday morning and telling him they would not be back. “I don’t come to church to be made uncomfortable,” they said. If we are the church, then we are not only Love with skin on, but also Pain and Grief and Hope and Joy and Despair incarnate. We are people deciding to be together, which means to be both comforted and uncomforted. It means we ought to be looking at one another and at our world with the same holy gusto with which our children sang.

Though Gallagher had changed subjects somewhat as I moved on to the next chapter, I found a connection between Augustine’s admonition and her thoughts on prayer:

I have always been wary of the “surrender to God” school of prayer, which seems to make one more passive than is necessary in a relationship that doesn’t seem to encourage passivity. (39)

Listening is not a passive act. If I’m paying attention – attending to my life – I am engaged and alive. “Be still and know that I am God” is not a call to being a blessed blob, but a direction for discernment and intentionality.

Be still and know.
Come and see.
Take and eat.

Together, we inhabit the Mystery, we incarnate the Love: we are the Church. Together.

Peace,
Milton

church in the snow

Since we can't get to church this morning because of the snow and ice, I've put together a service of poems, songs, and a film clip. So, having gathered, let us prepare our hearts for worship.


Our call to worship is "Morning Poem" by Mary Oliver.

Every morning

the world

is created.

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead ---

if it's all you can do

to keep on trudging ---

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly,

every morning,

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray.

Let us join together in singing our opening hymn.

Julie Miller will now lead our time of confession: "Broken Things."



Our first reading is "Poem" by Mary Oliver.

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

Our second hymn will be led by Emmylou Harris and Robert Duvall: "I Love to Tell the Story."



Our second reading is "Thanks" by W. S. Merwin.

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

Let us now come together for Communion.



The Gatlin Brothers will offer our closing hymn.



Let us go out with joy as Lyle Lovett and his Large Band offer the postlude.



Go in peace, live in grace, trust in the arms that will hold you.

Peace,
Milton

check yourself before you wreck yourself

Today was one of the first days in a long time that I had some morning traveling time: I had to drive to Cary, about twenty miles away, for an appointment with my eye doctor, which meant I got to drive home with my eyes dilated and NPR on the radio. I only stopped once: I pulled over to make some notes to come back to this evening.

The story that grabbed me concerned a doctor in Boston, Atul Gawande, and his new book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Here’s part of the transcript from the story:

"Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty," Gawande says. "It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong."

At the heart of Gawande's idea is the notion that doctors are human, and that their profession is like any other.

"We miss stuff. We are inconsistent and unreliable because of the complexity of care," he says. So Gawande imported his basic idea from other fields that deal in complex systems.

"I got a chance to visit Boeing and see how they make things work, and over and over again they fall back on checklists," Gawande says. "The pilot's checklist is a crucial component, not just for how you handle takeoff and landing in normal circumstances, but even how you handle a crisis emergency when you only have a couple of minutes to make a critical decision."

This isn't the route medicine has traveled when dealing with complex, demanding situations. "In surgery the way we handle this is we say, 'You need eight, nine, 10 years of training, you get experience under your belt, and then you go with the instinct and expertise that you've developed over time. You go with your knowledge.' "

To see if surgeons might perform better if the intricate steps necessary to avoid catastrophe were made explicit, Gawande and a team of researchers studied what happened when doctors used a reminder — what Gawande calls "a bedside aide" — to navigate complex procedures. (Click to see a sample Surgical Safety Checklist.)

"We brought a two-minute checklist into operating rooms in eight hospitals," Gawande says. "I worked with a team of folks that included Boeing to show us how they do it, and we just made sure that the checklist had some basic things: Make sure that blood is available, antibiotics are there."

How did it work?

"We get better results," he says. "Massively better results.

"We caught basic mistakes and some of that stupid stuff," Gawande reports. But the study returned some surprising results: "We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently."

Like making sure everyone in the operating room knows each other by name. When introductions were made before a surgery, Gawande says, the average number of complications and deaths dipped by 35 percent.

I got a great stack of books for Christmas. The one I picked up first was Ed Dobson’s The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do, which is a collection of his journal entries from his year of trying to live and eat and worship and treat people the way Jesus did. The entries are honest and interesting. I find myself a bit surprised that his life appears to be more complicated, rather than simplified, by his decision to live like Jesus. He does trim some things from his existence and learns to observe Shabbat and some of the dietary laws, all of which seem simpler, but he also picks up some things that have nothing to do with Jesus’ life in Palestine two millennia ago and yet seem to fit right in. Part of his commitment is to read the Gospels every week and to pray. His search for Jesus and for prayer has led him to learn how to pray with a rosary, an Orthodox prayer rope, and Episcopal prayer beads, all of which are new layers of life for a retired evangelical pastor with ALS.

I had just finished a section about the different prayer beads when I was called in to see the doctor and was intrigued by the ordering of thought and focus the different strings of beads and knots brought to Dobson’s prayers. He doesn’t write as one who understands everything he’s doing; he just writes down what he feels and experiences. When I heard the checklist story, I wondered if the beads didn’t provide some of that function: an ordering of what needs to happen in prayer for the heart to find its way home. (I don’t have the answers either – I’m just writing things down, as well.)

One of the prayers he talks about is the “Jesus Prayer”: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I first remember learning that prayer during a revival when I was on staff at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth. James Fanning was our preacher and, among other things, spoke at breakfast each day; one of those mornings he talked about the Jesus Prayer. Later that week, the wife of one of our staff members was killed when the propane tank attached to the house in the country where they were soon to retire exploded. I remember her husband saying the only words he found that kept him connected at all were those in the prayer, which he said over and over for hours in the night. I grew up in a tradition that taught me written and memorized prayers weren’t real prayers; Spirit-filled prayers were the ones made up on the spot. Following Dobson as he counts beads and knots, saying prayers passed down for centuries, and thinking of my colleague who found solace in those same well-worn paths to God, challenge me to think, as one who struggles with how to pray, I would do well to lean into these spiritual checklists, if you will, that are about far more than habit.

What Gawande says of hospitals is true of life: our great struggle is not just with ignorance and uncertainty, but also with complexity and how much we have to make sure we have in our heads and think about. One of Ginger’s touchstone book was also written by a Bostonian: It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys: The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized by Marilyn Paul. She offers what she calls the “thirty second check” on the way out the door – keys, wallet, phone, etc. – as a way to make sure you leave the house prepared for your journey, wherever it may be.

I have more to say about checklists and where the story took me than I can fit in here. As one who works in a world that thrives on prep lists (as we call them) to make sure we have everything ready for dinner, and as one who is committed to being a part of a community of Christian believers that are not as aware of how some checklists might help us, I’ve probably got a couple more posts around this idea to pass along as they ripen. For now, I go back to Gawade’s regard for pilots.

One of the things that struck me about the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when “Sully” Sullenberger brought the plane down that saved 155 people after it was hit by geese over Manhattan and landed it in the river was that over and over again we wanted to say, “Look at this hero who piloted this plane down,” and the striking thing was how much over and over again he said, “There was nothing that hard about the physical navigation of this plane.” Instead he kept saying “it was teamwork and adherence to protocol.”

Protocol may not be a particularly theological word, but ritual is: intentional repetition. Those pilots landed that plane safely in the river because they knew the steps to follow. My colleague found in the Jesus Prayer the ritual that gave his broken heart some sense of God’s comfort and love. We shared Communion together Sunday, and the deacons came early to practice how we do it: to go over our checklist, to remind us that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ. May we repeat ourselves as though our very lives depended on it.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: night vision

If someone were driving by our church tonight, they might have mistaken us for Baptists: the parking lot was full on a Wednesday night. The choir was rehearsing, with orchestra, for their Vivaldi offering on Sunday, the bilingual English class was having their Christmas party in the Fellowship Hall, and a group of us were gathered in the Dowdy Room (not a descriptive adjective, but the name of someone) for our annual Blue Christmas service, designed to allow those who are grieving or struggling to have permission to feel something other than full of holiday cheer. It’s one of my favorite services of the year and, in every church where we have had the service, it’s always a small crowd.

I know there are more than ten people in our church who are struggling through the season. I also realize there are any number of reasons they might not have been there; I’m not making a judgment here. I just wish for more because of what the service means to those who do participate. There is wonder-working power in shared grief and pain. We hold each other up and we learn from each other. I see my pain differently when I am sharing the load with those around me.

Chet Raymo sends my looking skyward, once more:

If we want to understand the Milky Way, it is usually best to look to other galaxies. The Milky Way is the one galaxy we cannot see in its entirety because we are inside it. (114)

We certainly feel our pain up close, yet when it comes to making meaning out of our existence we must look out, look toward one another in order to gain some perspective. I learned about my depression by reading what others lived through and by talking to almost anyone willing to share their experience. Had I been left solely to stare out into my own darkness, I couldn’t have found my way through deepest midnight of those days. Still, it seems we have to train ourselves to need one another, even when we know we don’t want to be alone. Living intentionally means choosing to live in community until it becomes second nature.

One of my favorite parts of the service tonight was the closing reading, which accompanied the lighting of four candles. I offer it as a view into our little constellation of compassion.

One: The first candle we light to remember those whom we have loved and lost. We pause to remember their names, their faces, their voices, the memory that binds them to us in this season. (Light first candle.)
All: May God’s eternal love surround us as we hold them near.

One: This second candle we light is to redeem the path of loss: the loss of relationships, the loss of jobs, the loss of health, the loss of dreams. (Light second candle.) We pause to gather up the pain of the past and offer it to God, asking that from God’s hands we receive the gift of peace.
All: Refresh, restore, renew us, O God, and lead us into your future.

One: This third candle we light is to remember ourselves this Christmas time. We pause and remember the disbelief, the anger, the down times, the poignancy of reminiscing, the hugs and handshakes of family and friends, and all those who stood with us. (Light third candle.)
All: Let us remember that dawn defeats darkness.

One: This fourth candle is to remember our faith and the gift of hope which the Christmas story offers to us. (Light fourth candle.) We remember that God who shares our live promises us a place and a time of no more pain and suffering.
All: Let us remember the One who shows the way, who brings the truth, and bears the light.

And then we sang:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by;
Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting Light!
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

As we sat silently, the Spanish folks snacked down the hall and, in the sanctuary, the singers and strings practiced for their concert; then we all went out into the night, as the galaxies gazed and glistened.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: towards a fascinated faith

I first found Chet Raymo in the Science section of the Boston Globe where he wrote a weekly column. I was neither an ornithologist nor an astronomer, but he talked of birds and stars in a way that fed both my curiosity and my faith: he made me think I could understand what he was talking about and share his sense of wonder. The first time I read The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage, I discovered we shared a faith background, though his was more history and mine present tense. He described his journey using a bird as his metaphor:

The upland plover is a shy bird. It is the color of dry grass. In the rare event that one I flushed, it takes to air with a soft, bubbling whistle . . . If the poet wanted an image for the absconded God, he could have found none better than the upland plover.

I can’t say exactly when it was that the God of my youth took to the upland plains. He was not driven from my soul. His flight was no fault of my teachers’. My lapse from faith occurred not long after graduation from college, at the end of a period of intense belief during which His face seemed palpably near . . . And sacred plovers leapt from every page, took to wings in coveys, and made a tumult with their wings that drowned the thin voice of doubt. Emily Dickinson called hope “the thing with feathers.” The plover was our hope. The plover was Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Then one day I woke up and the plover was gone . . . I turned to my science books and got on with the business of life. (55-56)

One of the songs that makes the rounds this time of year begins with the little lamb aasking the shepherd, “Do you hear what I hear?” I learned how to look at the night sky with a greater sense of wonder because of Raymo’s Science Musings and yet, he doesn’t see what I see anymore. The bird has flown, he says, and so he moved on. It doesn’t surprise me that he has found his new church, if you will, among scientists because scientists are the explorers of our age. We have circumnavigated the world time and again, but we are learning about particles smaller than we ever imagined, finding stars and quasars and black holes farther away than we ever dreamed we would be able to see, and dimensions to our existence far beyond the three we were taught in school. The legacy of the psalmist (“When I gaze into the night sky and see the wonders of your hands . . .”) has been passed beyond the church walls, and we are the lesser for it.

Shane Claiborne wrote an article for Esquire magazine (HT to Jan for pointing it out, since Esquire is not one of my regular reads) and said something that connects here, I think:

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

In 1972, Madeleine L’Engle was struggling with being told that identifying as a Christian would turn some people off. She responded:

I wouldn’t mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn’t mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn’t mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word “Christian” means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of “how those Christians love one another”? (98)

How did we become the keeps of the status quo, the defenders of truth, the rational ones determined to be relevant? Why are we not primarily consumed by and with the mystery and fascination of the Gospel story? What happened to lost in wonder, love, and praise?

We were breathed (laughed) into being, along with quarks and quasars, by our over-the-top-everything-matters-hey-look-what-I-can-do-I-love-you-with-all-my-heart-and-everyone-else-too-let’s-go-make-more-stars-and-stuff-all-ye-all-ye-oxen-free-crazy-go-nuts kind of God. Yet we talk about God as though it’s all business, and serious business at that. We live and worship as though our primary task is to explain God to the world, rather than introduce the One Who is Love to everyone we can and see what happens. Our God may be an awesome God, but our God is not rational. Our God is Love.

The Incarnation doesn’t make sense. Why God would choose to become human, and partake in the entire human experience from birth on, is in itself an outrageous act of redemption. Being fully human is a good thing. It matters; we matter because God loves us from the word go and never, never stops. That Unbridled Love let loose in the world means a peasant girl gives birth to the Messiah in a barn, poor shepherds hear angel choirs, rich foreigners chase stars across the sands, and there are mores stories than we can tell about those who healed and helped, even saved. We, as Christians, are not called to explain any of it, but to become carriers. of redemption, infected with the same irrational exuberance that lives in the heart of God.

A healthy church has less to do with making sure the theology is right than it does with being right with each other. If we chose to redeem our time together rather than make demands, we might see God differently and the story as well. Though I love Raymo’s imagery, I don’t see God as a shy bird hiding in the high places. The story we are telling in these days says just the opposite:

Love divine, all loves excelling
Joy of heaven to earth come down

Why, then, are we not out under the stars with the shepherds and the scientists asking, “Do you see what I see?” Oh, that we might live out a fascinated faith together.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: connected to change

I woke, on this first day of Advent, knowing that the day was full, moving from church to work to writing (since my practice is to write everyday during the season), and hoping I could point my mind and heart in a direction that would give me something to say when I got home from work around eleven. Just before I left the house, I checked the Writer’s Almanac for my daily dose of poetry only to find that this particular First Sunday of Advent is the same day on which both Madeleine L’Engle and C. S. Lewis were born. And I said – out loud, “At least I know what I’m going to write about tonight.”

I met both writers when I was a child. Not in person, you understand. Mrs. Reedy read A Wrinkle in Time to us as reward for our hard work as fourth graders at the Lusaka International School; I don’t remember how The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe ended up in my hands, but it set me off on adventures of my own as I climbed through the back of the wardrobe with Lucy and the others. I could fill up two or three shelves with books by the two of them, and write for several weeks about what each of the different books had meant to me. Therefore, I feel right in saying I met them when I was a child and they became my friends, though neither ever knew me.

Madeleine taught me about Advent, as well as the rest of the liturgical year. I have read and re-read The Irrational Season, which is a series of essays beginning with Advent (“The Night is Far Spent”), following the calendar through Epiphany and Lent and so on, and ending with Advent once more (“The Day is at Hand.”) I can’t get to my copy tonight because we have a friend visiting who is sleeping in the room where that book lives, and so I picked up one that stays here in the dining room, And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings, and paged through, reading what I had underlined many years ago. What I found reminded me that one of the strains of faith Madeleine has sung with resonance to my heart is that of connectedness.

Quanta, the tiny subatomic particles being studied in quantum mechanics, cannot exist alone; there cannot be a quantum, for quanta exist only in relationship to each other. And they can never be studied objectively, because even to observe them is to change them. And, like the stars, they appear to be able to communicate with each other without sound or speech . . . Surely what is true of quanta is true of the creation; it is true of quarks, it is true of human beings. We do not exist in isolation. We are part of a vast web of relationships and interrelationships which sing themselves in the ancient harmonies. Nor can we be studied objectively, because to look at us is to change us. And for us to look at anything is to change not only what we are looking at, but ourselves, too. (20,21)

My margin note reads, “Life is a group sport.”

This First Sunday also marks two years since Ginger came to what is now our church here in Durham. We moved because we felt God calling us here, which also meant leaving the Boston area, where we had spent all of our married life together, save the first four months. Two years means we have been here long enough to begin to find new friendships, which take time to grow, and long enough to be reminded moving does not mean forgetting. “I thank my God when I remember you,” Paul wrote, “because you have filled my life with joy.” Those words were burned into my heart because of a song the Youth Choir in Fort Worth sang to and for us as we were leaving them for Boston. Perhaps it is the lyric that best fits the ancient harmonies of which L’Engle speaks. Our daily lives are no more stable than the quarks and quanta, change being the defining word for all of us; what endures is love: love that calls our name from the past, love that greets us in the present, love that calls us into whatever the future might be.

Whatever it is, we will go together.

Seventeen or eighteen First Sundays ago, I went with Ginger to the church in Winchester for the first time. She had been the Youth Minister there for several months, but we didn’t have a car and I was in graduate school and teaching full time, so the prospect of losing a couple of hours to the commuter rail wasn’t an option for me. I slipped down Bunker Hill in Charlestown for early mass at the Episcopal church (again, thanks to Madeleine for the introduction) and then back home to study. Ginger came home one day and asked if I would be the prophet for Advent and walk in each Sunday in costume and read the lectionary passage. (Did I mention I had shoulder length hair and a beard at the time?) I think it was the second or third Sunday that Ginger came up with the idea that I should sing the chorus of “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” from Godspell as I came up the aisle, and then again as I exited. She has served three churches since then and I have sung my way to prophecy in each one.

The song has left an indelible mark on my heart, because it reminds me of the faces and stories that have gone with my ritual; these too, are words that fit the ancient harmonies. Today, as I walked out, the congregation sang with me. However we prepare, we will do it together, which means it will not be the same as every other First Sunday. As Madeleine says,

We do not love each other without changing each other. (21)

In what was then the second book in the Narnia series, Prince Caspian, Lewis wrote a scene that added another theme to my life. The children return to Narnia, much older now, and Lucy, the youngest, keeps looking for Aslan, the Lion. When she finally finds him – well, let me let Lewis tell it.

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

“Welcome, child,” he said.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” (141)

God changes, too, along with the quarks and the quanta and the quixotic band of pilgrims that sang with me this morning, or in Marshfield, or in Winchester, or in any place where people gathered to watch and wait to get lost in wonder, love, and praise, singing in tune with the ancient harmonies that call us to connectedness and to change.

Peace,
Milton

taking time

Remember when Alanis Morissette told us irony was “like rain on your wedding day” – which is mostly sad and not ironic at all? Well, it’s not raining here in Durham, but I have my own offering of irony: I’ve been all set for a post on Sabbath for several days and haven’t made time to write.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

This weekend my church hosted a conference on “Faith and the Environment.” My contribution was to help prepare the meals on Friday night and Saturday morning. One of the conference organizers took me on a shopping spree at our State Farmers Market in Raleigh and almost everything we ate came from there. I met some great people doing some wonderful things on both small and large scales. And I heard Norman Wirzba talk about Sabbath and what the concept means for our care of and compassion for the creation of which we are a part.

Using the Genesis 1 account as a map of sorts, he took us on a journey through the days in which God spoke all that is us and around us into existence and then looked at the Seventh Day when God rested to reflect on the purpose behind everything that had been brought into being. The climax of creation, Wirzba said, was this act of menuha, tranquility and repose. Sabbath is not doing nothing, but resting, reflecting, reinvigorating. Rest, in this sense, is the opposite of restlessness.

I came away with a couple of quotes that have stayed with me through what has already been a more restless week than I would like. I will quote them and then tell you they pull me beyond the speech in our Fellowship Hall.

Creation is the place where the love of God is made concrete.

Creation is an act of ultimate hospitality: God made room for what was not God to be.

Though I have not been posting, I have managed to get back in the routine of my Morning Pages (thanks, in part, to Wirzba’s words), which I see as a moment of morning Sabbath, if you will. And as I have turned these two ideas over in my mind and heart, what keeps coming to mind pulls me to see them in the light of knowing that I am created in the image of God. As God spent the “week” breathing, speaking, imagining a universe with everything from light years to ladybugs into existence and then followed that brilliance with time to think about what it all meant, I have weeks of my own to consider. What am I breathing, speaking, and imagining into the world in which I live? How is my love made concrete in what I do? Or is it? And then the big one, for me: how am I making room for what is not me to be?

Twice this week I’ve answered my phone to hear the voice of an old friend. Two different friends, actually. Each one was calling from the road, on their way from one place to another, and began with the same sentence, “I was driving and thinking about you and thought I would call.” The conversations took different turns after their openings, but both had the same result: I hung up the phone feeling loved and connected to something beyond me: to memories and dusty dreams, to laughter and longing, to hope , and to love (as E. E. Cummings said) that is “more thicker than forget.”

Their love made concrete has made me wonder who needs to hear from me.

Working in a restaurant kitchen carries with it a certain sense of urgency: we work with perishable products, we are almost always facing a deadline, and, once service starts, we cook until they quit coming. All those things are true, as is the fact that our sense of urgency is as much self-imposed as it is false. I get more calls on my day off than a heart surgeon it seems sometimes, and most of them were, well, not urgent. But waiting is not one of our strong suits. I’m working to understand this urgent illusion because buying into it is one of the ways I end up not making room for what is not me to be. I can’t make room. I don’t have time. I have things to do.

But living into the wholeness of being created in God’s image is about time, not things. Abraham Joshua Heschel said:

The Bible is more concerned with time than with space. It sees the world in the dimension of time. It pays more attention to generations, to events, than to countries, to things; it is more concerned with history than with geography. To understand the teaching of the Bible, one must accept the premise that time has a meaning for life which is at least equal to that of space; that time has a significance and sovereignty of its own.

If time is at the core of what life means, even as God took the seventh day to relish and reflect on what he had brought to be, how then does time feel like such a tyrant? Why do I feel I have to wrestle my schedule to find time for Ginger, for writing, for life?

I am not living creatively, I think. God did not imagine me living this way. I want to take time to imagine living differently as well.

And then write a new creation story of my own.

Peace,
Milton

straight talk

When I taught in the Boston Public Schools, one of my colleagues who became a friend was a man named Ed, who was a good eight inches taller than I was, in much better shape, and always had on a coat and tie. He is also African-American He told me a story of driving his friend’s BMW on the Southeast Expressway and being pulled over by a white cop who approached the car with his gun drawn and yelled, “What’s a n-----r like you doing driving a car like that?”

That has never happened to me, and the reason is because I’m white. In fact, I’m white and male and straight – the trifecta that means I know way more about privilege and access than I do about exclusion.

I have never had someone follow me around in a store because they were convinced I was going to shop lift just because of my skin color or appearance. I never had anyone write hate slogan on my school locker or trash my house because of who I was. I’ve never walked into a church and worried about whether or not I was welcome to worship. When Ginger and I married, we didn’t have to worry about the legality of our choice.

I mention all those things because they came to my mind as I sat at church Saturday afternoon in the middle of our church’s marking of our tenth anniversary as an Open and Affirming congregation, which means everyone is welcome regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. And they all came to mind when our speaker, Yvette Flunder, asked, “How do we include those who can’t hide the essence of their marginalities?” I thought about them as I talked to one of the members of the Common Woman Chorus, who sang as a part of the celebration, who grew up in church as a child but had not been in years because of the rejection she had experienced once she disclosed who she was. I watched as she tried to take in that church could actually be a loving and accepting place.

I spend a fair amount of time reading blogs and articles about the church, and I work hard to read across the spectrum that is Christianity. I have to say I think I am more discouraged than comforted by what I read because so much of what is written and said comes from a defensive posture, as though we need to stack sandbags around us to protect all that is good and right and true from the flood of all the things we have chosen to fear. I keep thinking about one of the first verses I ever remember learning in Sunday School: “Perfect love casts out fear.” (Right along with “God is Love” and “Love everyone as I have loved you.”)

I keep thinking about Jesus’ parable of the banquet where the invitations go out and all those who normally are included and used to seeing their pictures on the Society Page beg off with I-have-t0-polish-my-bowling-ball kinds of excuses. When the servants come back and the one throwing the party sees all the empty seats, he tells them to go out and invite any and everyone, to out “into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in.” They fill up the room with those who reek of the essence of their marginalities, and a good time was had by all.

I have always imagined Jesus finishing the story and yelling, “All ye, all ye ox in free,” with a big grin on his face. The church Jesus imagined was one that made room for everyone, regardless. Everyone. The power of love that broke down barriers between Jews and Greeks in the early church; that saw a church in Jackson, Mississippi go from one that hired armed guards to keep black people out in the Sixties grow into a multiethnic congregation today; the power of love that fueled the passion of Martin Luther King, Jr. to say we could not afford to wait anymore for change to come; that called our congregation – along with many others -- to be Open and Affirming; and that drives Amar, a man we met last Friday, to work to find work and housing for Nepalese refugees who are coming to Durham; is the same love that casts out fear, foments hope, and issues audacious invitations.

It was the love that was alive and well in our church this weekend. My heart is still full of the hope and joy I felt in that service, and in the one that followed on Sunday morning. And I have had a hard time finding words to write about it because I keep looking for words that build a bridge between the Baptist world that led me to faith in Christ and my home in the UCC, where that faith led me, words that would incite inclusion all around in Jesus’ name. I think back to my days as a youth minister and wonder who we might have reached had our youth group been decidedly open and affirming. We were a welcoming bunch, for sure, yet I still wonder.

What I heard again this weekend was if those at the margins are going to find their way into the circle it will be because those of us on the inside decided to make room. And I, the straight white Christian male, am about as inside as it gets. I am called to go out into the highways and the hedges, to make room for everyone I can, to love and love and love, to listen and not to judge.

One of the songs the Common Woman Chorus sang was a Holly Near chorus that has stayed with me. I think we are going to make it our new benediction at church:

I am open and I am willing
for to be hopeless would seem so strange
it dishonors those who go before us
so lift me up to the light of change

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: when I stand before God to account for my life, if God says, "Why did you let so many people in?" I'll take the hit. I can live with that. If God were to say, "Why did you keep closing the door when I intended there to be room for everyone?" I couldn't take it.

Peace,
Milton

life is a restaurant

Part of what makes working in a restaurant kitchen interesting is you never really know who is coming for dinner and when they are planning to come. At the Durham restaurant we take reservations, so we do know the answer a good bit of the time, yet last Sunday night we had reservations for forty and we served ninety by the time the evening was over. More than half of the people just showed up to become part of that evening’s story.

The Duke restaurant is even less predictable because our major client base is the student body and, even though we are a fairly spiffy sit-down restaurant, we are, in their minds, a dining hall. Who needs to make reservations for the dining hall? One night last week a group of seventeen walked in for dinner. They were followed by two groups of seven, two groups of six, and three groups of four, and all of them were seated within fifteen minutes of each other.

In what has become an unintentional series of blog posts, I thought I might add life is a restaurant to the list: you spend most of your time getting ready, you don’t know who is going to show up or how long they will stay, and the point is to feed people and let them enjoy being together. Not bad.

The idea has set me to thinking about the people who have wandered (wondered?) into my life, though I have to say the metaphor breaks down a bit here because the ones who came to mind were people who fed me as much or more than I did them. They came to mind because of what is going on at our church. We are getting ready for a big celebration of our own in early October marking the tenth anniversary of our congregation’s choice to be intentionally Open and Affirming, which is to say we welcome everyone. Period. The O&A designation has particular significance to the gay and lesbian communities because they are not always sure where they are welcome, when it comes to church. We wanted to make it clear.

I grew up Southern Baptist, so I know all the arguments and verses folks use to say gays and lesbians have to straighten up (pun intended) to be acceptable. I’m not writing to pick that fight. I started to write, “The conversation is difficult because no one comes in willing to have their minds or hearts changed.” Here’s the thing: I’m writing about this metaphor because it’s how my heart and mind were changed.

I’m chasing a metaphor, remember?

In the restaurant that is my life, I’m grateful for more people than I can count who have dropped in, but tonight I want to point to four people – four gay men – whom God used to shape my life. The first is my friend, Jay, who was my first gay friend. I don’t mean he was the first gay or lesbian person I ever met, but he was the first one with whom I developed a long-lasting friendship. When we lived in Boston, he came up from Texas every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas for about a decade and then, when he moved to Boston, he lived with us for a year while he was finding work and getting on his feet. We share history that connects us and stories that bind us together as intentional family. I’m thankful for Jay who has helped me learn to be a better friend.

The summer before I turned forty, I fell into an existential crisis about writing. I had said for years I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t feel like I was writing anything. So I signed up for a summer session at the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, which is where I met Timothy Findley. I worked with him in the workshops that week and then he served as my mentor in a one-year correspondence course to write a novel. (Yes, I did write a novel. No, it has never been published.) In conversations during the week, Tiff and I talked about writing and faith and life. He had started in the theater and was working in a play with Ruth Graham and Thornton Wilder when he published his first short story. Graham read it and told him to write. We made a strong connection with one another and continued writing after the class was over. Tim was an excellent writer, a thoughtful and faithful person, and he was gay. I’m grateful for Tiff who helped me recognize I am a writer.

My favorite Christmas gifts over the past few years have been experiences rather than possessions. Ginger does an amazing job of finding things for me to see and do that last long after the events are over. One of the best gifts she ever gave me was a class in Byzantine Iconography. I don’t mean to learn about them, or to admire them, but to paint (actually, the verb they use is to write) icons. For a week one January, and then weekly for many months to follow, I sat in the studio with Chris as he invited me into the spiritual practice of iconography. I learned ways to pray I had not known before. I learned so much about the history and significance of the images we were creating. I learned I was pretty good at writing the icons. And I found a real friend in Chris as well, whose gentle and vulnerable spirit was as much a window into heaven as the icons were. And he is gay. I’m thankful for Chris who showed me I am an artist and taught me how to pray with a brush.

The summer after we moved to Marshfield, I feel into a deep depression. I’ve written about it any number of times in these pages, so I’ll spare you the story now. One of the people who helped me find my way and make meaning of those dark days was Ken, who began as a my counselor and became my spiritual director as I sought to shift from looking at the depression to trying to find a more holistic perspective. Ken and I share a love of poetry and, on more than one occasion, he would end our session by saying, “I have a poem for you,” and he would hand me a photocopied sheet of something by Mary Oliver or Rumi or who knows that appeared to have been written just for me. I don’t know anyone else who incarnates the grace of God anymore than Ken. And Ken is gay. I’m grateful to Ken for helping me see life is full of meaning, even when I was depressed.

All four people helped shape my life and my faith. God has spoken to me through them, God has incarnated grace and love and hope and faith in their words and actions. I am the person and the Christian I am today because of the love and care of these four men. These four gay men. Don’t get me wrong. They don’t get all the blame. There are many others, gay and straight, whose love has carried me. Still, in the restaurant that is my life I could not feed those who drop in had it not been for the nourishment offered me by these four friends.

Every Sunday at our church, Ginger begins by quoting a UCC slogan:

Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey,
You’re welcome here.

Yes, I know it’s the UCC and that we are the liberals whose theology, as one Texas Baptist pastor used to say, “killed the Church of England.” (Another friend says it this way: if Christianity were a neighborhood, we’d be the last house on the left.) I also know, at the very bottom of it all, it’s about what you do with people way before what you do with Bible verses. One of the choruses I learned in youth group in the Seventies we sang last Sunday:

we are one in the Spirit we are one in the Lord
we are one in the Spirit we are one in the Lord
and we pray that our unity will one day be restored
and they’ll know we are Christians by our love by our love
yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love

Come, the table is now ready.

Peace,
Milton

making change

Over the summer, we have seen both the Chef de Cuisine and the Sous Chef at the restaurant leave for other places. Actually, the latter followed the former, which is not unusual in restaurant circles, but that’s a story for another time. Both guys were there when I joined the staff; they have been the bosses I knew, they have set the tone for the kitchen, they have been the ones who determined the routine.

And now, they are gone and we are left to deal with the change, and to change ourselves, for that matter.

Some years ago, Ginger and I were walking through Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts when a homeless man yelled out from his seat on the sidewalk, “Change!” Ginger turned and said, “I don’t have any money.”

I blurted back, “I’m trying, I’m trying.”

The two uses of the word aren’t that far apart, I suppose. Change, on the one hand, has to do with how you break down a dollar bill – or a five, or a ten – into smaller pieces: four quarters; ten dimes; two quarters, three dimes, three nickels, and five pennies. On the other hand, in places like our kitchen these days, change also has to do with how we break down the bigger picture and figure out the new formula to make things work, as familiar faces move away and new ones appear. For my part, I’m working different shifts, taking on different responsibilities, and learning the habits and hopes of my new coworkers. And the whole enterprise feels about as stable as the value of the dollar on the international market.

Stability, if not overrated, is certainly over-expected. Life is made of change. Our lives are dynamic, not static. There is no way to stand still, to stay the same. And we are dynamic creatures created to negotiate this changing thing called life. Some years ago, a friend gave me a book called Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories by Daniel Taylor. One of the key points early in the book has to do with learning to see ourselves as being a character, rather than having a personality. The latter leaves us looking at ourselves as somehow hardwired the way we are and unable to change much, but when we see ourselves as characters in our own life story, we create the possibility for change.

My days as an English teacher come roaring back here to remind me of all of the discussions I have had with students around “character development” and how a person grows and changes as he or she encounters the events in the story. A character is both recognizable and able to change, just as I can see myself in the pictures of me over the years and yet I am not who I was then. The point of our story – of The Story, if you will – is to grow and change. We fall out of wholeness and health when we try to stay the same and ask life to follow suit. We show our character when we use the change to make life add up in a new way.

Let me be specific. When the Chef de Cuisine left, it was hard for me. I like him, I trust him, and I liked working for him. I learned a lot about being a manager from him and he was someone I could bounce ideas off of. We also had shared interests in books and music and history. I really did wonder how well the kitchen would hold up without him. And I wondered what I would do. Last week a new Sous started. He is not the other guy and he brings some wonderful new things to the kitchen. Learning to work with him has challenged me to look at how I do things, to offer information about our restaurant, to intentionally listen to see what new things he has to bring and what his fresh eyes can see about us that we have either forgotten or ignored.

The nature of our business is that neither one of us will be in that kitchen forever. Some summer down the road, one of us, or one of the other guys who make up our team will begin their own new chapter without our daily involvement and we will all make change. Driving home from the memorial service of one of our beloved church members who has been a part of our congregation for a long time, it struck me that church works a great deal like a restaurant kitchen: the mission to feed others is ongoing, even as the characters change. We have the same mission, but the cast of characters calls us to rethink how we do things, why we do things, and what we can learn from and about each other.

One of the Bible verses that has given me pause for about as far back as I can remember is Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” because one of the things I love about Jesus is he is not the same – even in the Gospels. If the verse said, “Jesus Christ is Jesus yesterday, today, and forever,” then I’m in. But life isn’t the same because God isn’t the same. We were breathed into existence by a God whose very nature is full of imagination and dynamism. How can we say, “God is Love” and then think God stays the same? Love is change at it’s best. Love builds character, creates relationships, gives meaning: “now we see through a glass darkly, but someday we will see face to face.”

The very essence of love is to make change out of life: to take all of the elements and make them add up differently. We are finding new life in the kitchen because we are letting go and letting in at the same time. Perhaps the nature of a restaurant makes that easier than in church because our sense of a sacred institution causes something to rise up in us that makes us feel as though we must protect and defend the church (either big or little C) from change. We too easily become convinced that it is our stability that has sustained us and lose sight of the subversive, ever-changing love of God that will not let us go and calls us to practice the art of letting go and letting in, of character building, or see ourselves in story rather than stained glass.

“I love to tell the story,” we sang in church on Sunday, “for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.”

I love that song because I trust it is true – and that we are characters in that same, still unfolding story.

Peace,
Milton