just give me something

I still remember the Christmas morning when, after unwrapping most of our gifts, my mother pointed to two cards stuck on the tree, one with my brother’s name on it and one with mine. A string ran from each card, leading us in different directions all over our house until we came to find our guitars.

For almost twenty-nine years I have had a six string of some sort. Mom and Dad hired a guy to give us lessons, but I lasted with those about as well as I did with the piano lessons in the second grade. But I did sit on the side of my bed and try to play along with my records, learning chord shapes from my friends and how the chords went together from listening to people I loved to hear. Like any guitar-toting teenager, I dreamed about being a singer or being in a band, but I wasn’t one of those who spent his afternoons learning licks and doing whatever it took to be a musician.

For me the magic of the guitar was that it always seemed to come with a group attached to it. I learned how to play because there were a group of us at Nairobi International School who all had guitars and we brought them with us and sat around during lunch (and some classes) playing and singing together. I have always had the good fortune to have friends who were better guitar players than I and who were wiling to teach me. In college, I found friends in my Baylor dorm who loved to sing and play and so we did, night after night. As a youth minister, I played and sang with my group because I loved how it made us feel connected. University Baptist Church was known for its youth choir, so the kids could sing well, so we sang every chance we could and they would find harmonies to add to what we were doing. When I play some of those songs, I can’t help but hear them still:

and the depth of God’s love reaches down, down, down
to where we are until we’re found, found, found

I’ve sung and played in a lot of church settings. When I wrote songs with Billy Crockett I sang back up for him a time or two. Then there was the weekend in Baton Rouge where he had a gig at the LSU BSU and I drove over to meet him. He was flying in – and was delayed. So someone there who knew I wrote with Billy suggested I sing until he got there. Of course I couldn’t sing any of our songs; he was going to do that. I took my guitar and sang everything I could think of. For and hour and a half. It’s still my longest gig.

Boston was a big Open Mic town. There were lots of little clubs and bars that set aside nights to let folks come in and take their shot. Club Passim in Harvard Square, one of my favorite rooms anywhere, had one on Tuesday night and I used to go and run sound. I thought about getting up there, but I never did. Actually, I never got up on stage in any club for Open Mic on any night in any town until last night.

I found out a couple of months ago that the Broad Street Café, just a block away from our house, has an Open Mic on alternate Wednesdays. Ginger and I have walked over a couple of times. The way an Open Mic works is those who want to perform show up at a given time (7:30 at Broad Street) and sign up for a time slot. Some places make you draw, others just take you in the order you show up. At 7:30, I was in the middle of the dinner rush, but I had remembered it was Open Mic and decided it was time to go and play. Part of it was I am singing and playing with my friend Terry on Saturday for a benefit and I wanted to feel ready for that. Part of it is I am working eleven hour days right now and feel like all I do is go to work and come home and I didn’t want to feel that way. Mostly, it just felt like it was about damn time I got up there with my guitar and sang for a room full of people who didn’t know me.

I called Ginger and asked for a date to walk over after I got home from work. By the time I got home and showered and we got to the café, it was working on ten o’clock and I only had to wait about three performers before I closed the evening. The two guys who sang before me called themselves “Lila” (not sure why), did a sort of acoustic hip-hop thing, and were both high.

I didn’t sing for a room full of people. I think there were ten or twelve. Fifteen if you count the dishwashers and the bartender. I didn’t care. I plugged in my guitar and started the intro to John Hiatt’s “Through Your Hands,” which in one of the songs we are doing on Saturday. It was hard to hear and it was my first public performance of the song and it was, well, a little rough. I did alright, but no one stopped their conversations to listen. Each performer gets to sing two, so I chose a more familiar song – no, I chose my favorite song for the closing number. I don’t remember when I learned the song, but it is one that lives deep in my bones, that moves me in ways I can’t articulate.

The song is John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.”

The first time I ever played it publicly was at a church banquet in Winchester, Massachusetts and I led into the song by saying, “I relate to this song more than any song I know.” Then I sang the first line:

I am an old woman named after my mother . . .

Last night I didn’t say anything. I just started playing the introduction and then singing the words and it felt good and I didn’t care that the high guys were talking almost as loud as I was singing because I was singing. At Open Mic. After all these years.

The lines in the last verse that has always killed me snuck up softly as I stood there after my eleven hour day, just a couple of phrases away from ending the evening of performers I didn’t hear:

how the hell can a person go to work every morning
and come home every evening and have nothing to say

“That’s why I’m here,” I thought. “It’s been a long day, but I still have something.”

I finished my short set and stepped down to talk to Ginger and to pack up my guitar. As we were walking out, I turned to one of the high guys and said, “Good job tonight.”

He smiled and said, “You, too, sir.”

“Just give me one thing I can hold on to,” says the song. Last night, for me, that was it.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- And here's the person who taught me the song.

lenten journal: god is a river

I’m tired.

This has been a busy week at work and I’ve been working hard to finish the ten gallons of soup for Empty Bowls tomorrow night, which meant I spent every spare moment of the last couple of days chopping and dicing until my hands are rough and cracked. Though dinner went well tonight, I spent the whole evening feeling a step behind and out of sync.

I’ve now been sitting in front of a blank page for the last hour and a half, trying to figure out what I had to say on a night like this. I got tired of staring and went looking for what others had to say, which led me to this video clip posted, on Cecilia’s blog, of folksinger Peter Mayer singing his song (new to me), “God is a River.” I’ve included the lyrics to read as you listen.

In the ever-shifting water of the river of this life
I was swimming, seeking comfort; I was wrestling waves to find
A boulder I could cling to, a stone to hold me fast
Where I might let the fretful water of this river ‘round me pass

And so I found an anchor, a blessed resting place
A trusty rock I called my savior, for there I would be safe
From the river and its dangers, and I proclaimed my rock divine
And I prayed to it “protect me” and the rock replied

God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go

Still I clung to my rock tightly with conviction in my arms
Never looking at the stream to keep my mind from thoughts of harm
But the river kept on coming, kept on tugging at my legs
Till at last my fingers faltered, and I was swept away

So I’m going with the flow now, these relentless twists and bends
Acclimating to the motion, and a sense of being led
And this river’s like my body now, it carries me along
Through the ever-changing scenes and by the rocks that sing this song

God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go

God is the river, swimmer
So let go

One of the ways I was taught to unpack dreams is to look at what happened in the dream from the perspective of each person or thing in the dream. As a youth minister, I found it was a great approach to looking at different Bible passages – especially the parables. What did it feel like to be the prodigal son, the father, the eldest son, the servants, the pigs? What I like best about the approach to either subject is it calls me to look at the interconnectedness of the metaphors, and the consequences of interpretation.

Mayer’s image isn’t new. He's leaning into those who have sung before him:

like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace
overall victorious in its bright increase
perfect yet it floweth fuller everyday
perfect yet it groweth deeper all the way

What he does with the image that knocks me out is put us in relationship with the metaphor. His is not abstract poetry; we are called into the action with an amazing line:

God is a river, swimmer

He names God, and then he names us. The metaphor would mean something different were we fishing, or farming, or building bridges, or (as Loggins and Messina used to sing) watching the river run. But in this story, we are in the water -- not taking from or adding to or going around or sitting it out; we are in the river, swimming.

I’m grateful for such an image to feed my dreams tonight.

Peace,
Milton

little boats

I spent Saturday with a group from church on a “LifeCraft Retreat,” where we built little boats as metaphors of our life journeys. We all started with the same pieces of wood and a roomful of materials and possibilities and each emerged with small crafts that both showed parts of our stories and set sail in the small pool on the porch of the Stone House. As we went around the room telling what brought us to the retreat, we all talked about transitions, searching, grief.

It’s not easy to find your place in this world, even in these days of GPS.

Years ago, a song lodged in my heart that Noel Brazil wrote and Mary Black recorded. It came back to me this morning as I looked at the pictures from the retreat.

Columbus

Better keep your distance from this whale
Better keep your boat from going astray
Find yourself a partner and treat them well
Try to give them shelter night and day
'Cause here in this blue light
Far away from the fireside
Things can get twisted and crazy and crowded
You can't even feel right

So you dream of Columbus
Ever time the panic starts
You dream of Columbus
With your maps and your beautiful charts
You dream of Columbus
With an ache in your travelling heart

See how the cormorant swoops and dives
Must be some thrill to go that deep
Down to the basement of this life
Down to where the mermaid gently sleeps
Not like here in this blue light
Far away from the fireside
Where things can get twisted and haunted and crowded
You can't even feel alright

And as tide must ebb and flow
I am dragged down under
And I wait the livelong day
For an end to my hunger

So I dream of Columbus
Every time that the panic starts
I dream of Columbus
With my maps and my beautiful charts
I dream of Columbus
And there's peace in a traveling heart
I dream of Columbus

I’m sailing away . . .

Peace,
Milton

the language of fat

Though National Poetry Month is over, I’m still getting a poem-a-day from Poets.org, for which I continue to be grateful. The first stanza of today’s poem took me on an unexpected journey, or, I should say, raised an unexpected question. Here’s what I read:

Surf Buddha
by Matthew Lippman

There is a sandalwood Buddha on the desk that has my stomach
and I don't suppose to call myself a Buddha
or even pretend to know much about Buddhist whirlings
but Rachel gave me the thing and it's got my belly
the one my father has got
and the one his father had
and I know this bulge the way I know my name,
and can't believe I've become the language of fat
that the boys in my family have kept quiet.
(You can read the rest of the poem here.)

The question needs a bit of contextualizing. As far back as I can remember, I’ve thought of myself as fat. When I see pictures of myself from high school and college, I don’t look like I remember feeling: I’m not fat. As I grew older, I grew larger, and round and funny has had its payoff. When I picture myself, I see a big, round guy. Three weeks ago, I started going back to Weight Watchers. I think this is my fourth time. Since I feel I’m on the verge of being a serial weight watcher, I’m working hard to approach it differently this time. So far, there’s fourteen pounds less of me than there was three weeks ago. And I still think of myself as the big round guy. So, my question is:

How do I stop speaking the language of fat?

Actually, the poem says it best: I’ve become the language of fat. How do I become a new language, a new vocabulary? How do I find fluency in something other than the destructive comfort that has felt so much like me for so long?

My family moved to what was then Southern Rhodesia to be missionaries when I was one year old. Like the others before them, they spent their first weeks in language school to learn Sindabele. I stayed with a wonderful woman named Selina who took care of me and spoke to me in both her language and mine. As my father tells it, the first day of class the teacher gave them some vocabulary words. The first word was “isikwapa,” which means “armpit.”

My father was indignant. He had come halfway around the world to tell people about Jesus and the first word he learned was armpit? (By the way, it’s the only word, all these years later, that anyone in my family remembers.) They kept going to class and I stayed with Selina. When I began to talk, I was bilingual from the start; my parents would have done better to stay home with us.

Part of the difference was I had no language to unlearn. They had years and years of grammar engrained into their bones that had to be at least circumvented if they were going to speak a new tongue. Sindabele is one of the “clicking languages,” where you have to learn how to make a particular sound with various consonants. It’s hard work. They did it and it didn’t come easy. Then they had to do it again when we moved north to Zambia. But, if they were going to do what they came to do, they had to learn a new language.

The language I know is as not just the language of fat but also the language of failure. In six and a half years, I will be the same age my grandfather was when he died. He, like me, was a barrel of a man who carried all his weight between his neck and his waist. He, like every male in his family, dropped dead of a heart attack. My father, who will turn 79 in September, rewrote the grammar of his life and is healthy and aging. I’m grateful for his tenacity and resolve. Even with his example, the family resemblance looms large in my life. I feel a little bit like an escaped soldier in one of those old World War Two movies who steals the German uniform and then has to try and fake his way out to get to safety. If he can’t convince people he speaks German, he’s not going to make it. Unless I learn the language of hope, when it comes to my body image, I’m sealing my fate.

I’ve lost fourteen pounds; I have sixty more to go. But the language I want to learn has more to it than numbers and pounds. It is about more than loss. As someone who is an amazingly average athlete, I must learn the words that let me articulate how spending time on the elliptical machine at the gym is paying off. I don’t enjoy working out, particularly, and I have begun to notice my endurance is better, as is my spirit, even at the end of a twelve-hour shift. I must develop a vocabulary that moves beyond whether I gain or lose weight from week to week and talk in more expansive images of how I will be alive and fit in twenty or thirty years. I need new metaphors to remind me I am more than my tummy. I’m not Buddha. Who I am is not determined by how much I weigh. I need images that help me describe what I’m setting free within myself rather than what I’m losing.

I don’t have to buy into the stereotype of the chubby chef. I can find language that expresses the love of good food and being fit and healthy are things that compliment each other, rather than standing at cross purposes. The language is already written; I just have to learn it.

I want the rest of my life to be different and I want it to last a long, long time.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: yes, you can

For most of the Marches we have lived here Ginger and I have spent a day together at the New England Flower Show. For the first few years, we would forget it was going on until we saw an advertisement and then we’d scramble to get to the Bayside Expo Center before it closed. Six or seven years ago, we discovered we could join the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and get free tickets with our membership that were mailed to us in February and gave us time to plan when we wanted to go.

Our day at the show has a very particular arc. We enter the main exhibit hall, drop off our coats at the coat check (since Spring doesn’t follow the calendar in these parts), and then walk through the exhibits in the main hall. This year, my favorite was a series of dining tables set in garden settings, each one done by a different group or company. The place settings, centerpieces, and decorations gave a hint of what kind of meal might be served at each table. Some of them gave me the sense that whoever decorated them never thought about sitting down to eat, only having people stand around and talk about how pretty the table looked.


The theme for this year’s show is “Yes, you can!” which I think has more to do with encouragement than with granting permission. I suppose they wanted us to look at the tables and the arrangements and the landscaping exhibits and think, “We could do that in our back yard.” I like the idea – though, for some of the things, a better theme would be “Yes, you can -- if you have a bunch of money,” in the same way Steve Martin used to joke, “OK, I’m going to tell you how to be a millionaire. First, get a million dollars.” One of the reasons I go to the show is to be inspired to think about getting our garden ready for Spring and about what I vegetables I want to plant, even though we are weeks away from any serious planting. From our visits to the Flower Show over the years we have gotten some great ideas and learned we can do a lot of things, even without a huge bankroll.

Once we circle through the main hall, we move to the exhibit hall in the back of the building. Our most important stop is the first: the Iguana Cantina, a Mexican food booth done by the Cactus Club restaurant in Boston. They have a small counter that seats four where we have margaritas and quesadillas and have a conversation with the guy running things who is one of the managers from the restaurant in town. Every year we have a different conversation with him. This year’s focused on two things: his almost one-year old daughter and his love of winemaking.

I loved how animated he became as he talked about making wine in his basement. He has barrels from both France and America. He buys the grapes from the Napa Valley. As he talked, his story meandered from remembering his father and grandfather making what amounted to spiked grape juice when he was a kid to his dream of creating a business where he could help people make their own really good wine. While he talked, the people working with him were handing out beers and burritos as fast as they could and he never lost track of his task at hand. I suppose it could also be said the other way around: as he dished out the food like a short order cook he never lost sight of his dream.

Across from his booth was one of the event banners: “Yes, you can!” I hope he saw it.

We’ve talked to this guy for at least the last three years, which means his dream is aging right along side of the wine he’s making. If his dream is to come true, it will be because he was willing to carry it to term, to live through the discomfort and hope of the gestation period, however long it may be. (That’s probably about as far as a male writer can carry a pregnancy metaphor without losing credibility.)

Dreams don’t come true overnight, anymore than gardens grow quickly. I planted Brussels sprouts last June and ate them in October. The trees we planted six summers ago only now are beginning to shade our front porch from the afternoon sun. All we could do was plant the trees, tend to them, and wait for them to grow. Some dreams take money, but all of them take time.

After lunch, we walk up and down the aisles of the exhibit hall, looking at the various gardening tool demonstrations, fence and stone displays, statuary stores, artists’ booths, and, of course, the fudge vendor. We rarely buy anything other than food and drink, except the occasional Christmas or Mother’s Day present. (We found one of each.) Then we go back to coat check and leave the flowers for the cold wind of the parking lot and the drive back home.

Though the wind did blow today, the cloudless sky meant there was not as much snow in the yard when we got home tonight as there was when we left. Spring officially snuck in tonight, but will also have to wait awhile to come true in these parts. By Easter, perhaps, the daffodils along our front fence line will begin to poke their heads up, followed by the tulips. When the hostas begin to come up, I’m going to have to split them this year because, five years on, they are huge and need to be thinned out. I’ve also got to move several things around one of the hydrangeas because I was shortsighted in my planting a couple of years back and didn’t leave enough room for it to grow. I planted it as it was, not as it could become. Though our garden is mostly perennials, there is much to do to keep it growing and healthy. Though I think I know what’s there, I’m always surprised.

Tomorrow I will head back to the Inn to cook and dream about where my cooking will lead me someday. I have a brochure from the Flower Show. Maybe I’ll put it up on the bulletin board under my to do list.

“Yes, you can!”

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: what you goin' to be?

One of my favorite people at work is Pedro, one of our dishwashers. He is Brazilian and is still working on learning English. He and I have struck up a friendship and I look forward to him coming in each evening because I know I’m going to be greeted with a big smile, a big hug, and a big “What up?” He gets to work about five or five-thirty after working construction all day, so about seven he is ready for something to eat. Last night, he came to my side of the line to ask me to fix something for him and the other dishwasher. He said it this way:

“Milton, can you please make two hungrys for me and Viviana.”

I knew exactly what he meant and fixed their dinners and I’ve spent some time since thinking about the way he chose his words, wondering if he might be on to something. Instead of saying, “I need a nap,” how about, “I need a sleepy,” for instance. I remember an old interview Bill Moyers did with the poet Carolyn Forche in which she talked about how her immigrant grandmother used words functionally: instead of calling it a colander, she would ask for the “macaroni stop water go through” and everyone knew what she wanted.

I don’t know much Portuguese at all, other than my one unintentional pun. I also don’t know much about the lives of most of the folks I work with, other than what I see in the kitchen; they don’t know much about me, either. We come together to do our jobs, then we go our separate ways.

Today, I didn’t have to go to work and I spent the day working on my present for Ginger, which I can’t tell you about since she reads the blog, and eating lunch with my friend Doug for our Support Group Christmas Party. Doug and I go to different places for work and then come together to not talk about work and really get to know each other. Regardless of what Doug does to pay the bills, he is a painter. He gave me one of his paintings for Christmas. Over the last few years, he has spent a lot of time and energy learning about painting and honing his skills. Based on the piece hanging in my house, he has spent his time and energy well. Based on our conversation at lunch, he’s not spending his time and energy, he’s investing it. This time last year, I was determined to feel like a writer rather than wish I was one, so – with much help from Gordon – I started this blog. Tonight marks my 250th post, which was my personal goal before the anniversary date on December 27. I can say I’m a writer.

The BRH Choir put out a Christmas album while I was at Baylor and it included a song I had not known before then that I thought of driving home from my time with Doug and our quest for being more than doing. It’s called “Baby, What You Goin’ To Be?”

Baby, Lying in a manger, slumbering so sweetly,
What you goin' to be?
Baby all the world is watchin',
all the world awaits to see,
what will you be?
Baby sleeping in a stable, underneath the heavens,
what you goin' to say?
Baby, did you bring the Good News?
Did you come to light our way?

Oh, look, see the cattle asleep, see the shepherds beside,
See the Wise Men, they bow unto you.
Are you the one who was meant to be Master?
To bring in the Kingdom too?

Alleluia

Baby, Hope of all the people,
what you come here to do?
What you come to say?
Baby, can you be the Savior?
Come to save the world one day?
Baby can you be the Savior?
Come to save the world one day?
Baby lying in a manger,
will you save the world one day?

As someone once reminded me, we are human be-ings, not human do-ings.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: wake up

My birthday means I’ve made some additions to both my literary and music libraries. One of the volumes I got to spend a little time with tonight is Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden. The second poem is one by the marvelous Spanish poet, Antonio Machado called “Last Night as I was Sleeping” (translated by Robert Bly). Perhaps because I’m running on fumes and ready for some sleep the title pulled me.

I was also attracted because I love Machado’s poetry. Even in translation, there is a rhythmic beauty that pulses in ways English cannot on its own. His words are invocation, evocation, and benediction all at once. Housden quotes two small sections from Machado’s “Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs,” one of which says:

Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up

Machado is a poetic alarm clock calling us to awake, look, and listen. His words are those of a prophet. Here’s the poem:

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

I don’t remember dreams very often. I wake knowing that I dreamed, but with little clue to what they were about. Ginger remembers her dreams with all the detail of a forensic investigator and is able to learn a lot from them. The word dream is more alive to me when it means hope, possibility, or expectation. That one word is used for both is worth noting because I think both kinds of dreams are connected: both speak of our spirit finding voice and sight – waking up. Phillips Brooks must have understood the connection when he wrote:

the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Dreams carry some of both hopes and fears, as well as a good dose of the unknown and the unexplainable. They also chip away at our senses of adequacy and control because they are packed full of paradox. The best thing a dream can do for us is to make us wake up. For Machado, waking was a spiritual act. Speaking to Jesus he said,

All your words were
one word: Wake up.

Wake up to a spring breaking forth, to golden bees, to a fiery sun, to God. Wake up to hard choices and good friends. Wake up to transformation.

Peace,
Milton

aging, grieving, dreaming, and laughing

I have several disconnected things on my mind, so here they are in no particular order.

_______________________________

I got my first birthday-related piece of mail today: an invitation to join the AARP now that I am turning fifty. I am old enough to remember when AARP stood for the American Association of Retired Persons, but that didn’t bring in enough money so now the letters are the official name, the same way Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC so you would think they quit frying stuff.

In the course of conversations a couple of weeks back, I talked with an eighteen year old and an eighty-two year old. I got to thinking about it later and realized I am exactly the same number of years from either age. I don’t really have a point here, I just thought it was interesting.

_______________________________

I also got a package in the mail today from my friend, Billy Crockett, who has a new instrumental CD called Passages that is fourteen original pieces for classical guitar. (Listen to an excerpt of "Pilgrim I." There is also a companion score available. To quote him:

My hope is that you will, with Passages, be reminded of the wordless ways of the heart, of midnight voyages on the water, and of the simple gifts of old architecture and strings on wood.

You can purchase the record through his web site.

_______________________________

I read last night that Robert Altman died a week ago of leukemia. He was eighty-one. Altman was a creative and unique voice in American filmmaking, hitting some out of the park and striking out brilliantly with others. His last movie, A Prairie Home Companion, is a gem. His first breakthrough, M*A*S*H, is worth a look, along with The Player and Shortcuts. CNN has a nice video tribute here. He never won an Oscar, but was given a lifetime achievement award this past year. "The major studios, since I've been involved with Hollywood . . . they make shoes and I make gloves," he said.

_______________________________

Speaking of movies, one of my favorites kept coming to mind today. I think I'm going to watch it tomorrow: Miss Firecracker. It is the story of Carnelle, a struggling girl who thinks winning the Miss Firecracker Beauty Pageant in her home town of Yazoo City, Mississippi will set her free to leave town "in a blaze of glory." Mary Steenburgen, Tim Robbins, Scott Glenn, and Alfre Woodard are also in the cast. It was directed by Thomas Schlamme, Aaron Sorkin's partner behind The West Wing and Studio 60 fame.

In the closing moments of the movie, Carnelle says, "I just want to know what I can reasonably expect out of life." Scott Glenn's answer is worth the trip.

_______________________________

I close with a video clip I Stumbled Upon: Tyson the Skateboarding Bulldog.

snowflake sunday

Since she got back from sabbatical, Ginger has made a point of preaching on some difficult texts and topics, rather than simply choosing the Gospel reading from the lectionary. She has been doing a great job. This week, her text was “the last words of David.” Her choice of subject sent me back to chorus my senior year at Westbury High School. We sang Randall Thompson’s setting of David’s words at graduation. I was then, and am still, a tenor, so I got to wail on the opening lines: “He that ruleth over men, must be just, must be just, MUST BE JUST.”

Trust me, it’s a killer tenor line.

The piece moves on into a beautiful melodic section that carries the lyric, “And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun rises; even a morning without clouds – after rain, after rain, after rain.” Such was our Friday morning after a Thanksgiving storm that deserved a name. We woke to a cloudless day washed clean and blown dry by the rain and wind of the night before.

David’s final words were to say that’s what justice looks like.

Before it was Ginger’s turn to speak, Kathy, one of our wonderful children’s workers gave the children’s sermon and talked about Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley.

No, not Wilford Brimley. That’s this guy.


Wilson Bentley is a man who lived his whole life in Vermont (1865-1931) and spent his whole life studying snowflakes and photographing them. He is the one responsible for our knowing that no two snowflakes are alike. As she began to talk about snow, I found myself thinking about those mornings I’ve spent shoveling out our driveway so we could get to work. All those unique falling crystals can stack up to create quite a barrier. Bentley grew up where the snow is measured in feet and was able to see beauty in individual, short-lived, unbelievably temporary snowflakes. And on top of that, he was patient enough to photograph them. Though he took over five thousand pictures of snowflakes, some winters yielded no more than a dozen useful images.

What amazing things are possible when wonder and tenacity unite.

Our children’s sermons create a very pregnant swirl at the front of the church each Sunday. Kathy has a way of shaping the energy and excitement into meaning with what I think must be the same kind of deftness and patience that Bentley needed to photograph flakes of frozen water. She began by quoting something Ginger says at each baptism – that we are wonderfully and uniquely made in the image of God – and then asking the kids if they ever wondered what that meant. They had not, but she had and she gave them cause to wonder by the way she unwound the story of Wilson Bentley.

She also took some time to describe how a snowflake starts from a single molecule and then, as it falls, adds more and more, developing its symmetrical six-sided shape, and taking its unique form from the unique set of circumstances – wind, temperature, humidity – that are occurring at the exact moment it is being formed. My mind moved from snowflakes back to the people in the room, each of whom was also formed by all that swirled around them as they were growing into who God created them to be. Some of us have been blown off course, some feel more handicapped than holy, some have caught a glimpse of who we are and who we are becoming. One of the best things we can do is stick together, like snowflakes in a drift, as we live out our faith as the church. Nothing we do or say is any more permanent than a snowflake and everything we do or say is crucial to what happens in our world. We, who are as unique and as temporary as snowflakes, can bring about a cloudless day when we incarnate love as justice and believe that things do not have to be as they seem.

The snowflakes had not melted in my mind when Ginger came to this quote in her sermon (sorry, I don’t have the documentation):

Our own future is not dependent upon what human power has realistically done or can do. For those who dare to imagine it, and give poetic voice to it, the future that is God’s future and therefore is always open to the possibilities of justice, faithfulness, and life no matter how realistic might be our assessment of the powers of oppression, sin and death. Surrounded by a troubled and broken world and the crisis of our own lives, we lose sight of God’s power at work beyond and in spite of our human limitations and sin. In the name of realism, we define ourselves, our goals, our communities by our failures and not by our visions. We settle for problems to solve rather than ideals to embody.

One other thing happened with the children before the sermon. I’m teaching them a song for the Christmas Pageant, so I walked over to the Parish House with them after the children’s sermon to teach them during their opening time. Last week, a small altar was set up and, after we sang, we lighted three candles, one for each person in the Trinity, and then prayed together. Today, when we got over there, things were not set up for either the song or the ceremony. One of the teachers had a boombox and the CD of the song we are learning, but the altar was locked up. I was getting ready to pray and send them to class when one of the boys raised his hand and said, “We can do it without the candles.”

He was right. And so I asked them what each candle symbolized and they answered:

for God, who created us;
for Christ, who loves us;
for the Spirit, who fills us.

I walked back to the sanctuary in the sunshine and took my place in the pew, among the other snowflakes who melted together in prayer and praise. David used his last words to say love has less to do with legacy than with listening, less to do with permanence than patience, more to do with community than accomplishment.

And he learned all that without ever seeing a snowflake.

Peace,
Milton

riding a metaphor

I was heading to church tonight for the "Affluenza" class when I hit a big rock or piece of curb stone or something along the edge of the road in the town center. I felt it. My right front tire sort of skipped.

I kept going.

About a half a mile from the church, I started to hear a flapping kind of noise coming from the right side of the car and I knew my tire was going flat. Since I was on a dark two lane road with no real place to stop without putting myself in danger of getting hit by another car, I slowed down and drove on to the thc church. After the class, which was full of good things, I came out to change the tire. Since was the first flat we've had on the Wrangler, it took me a bit to find the jack and other tools; then I found that the axle was lower than the jack was tall and I called AAA. Of course, what I found out next was our AAA membership had expired, I renewed it over the phone and then gave the operator the specifics of my problem.

Forty-five minutes later, a giant tow truck pulled in the Parish House parking lot with two guys in it. The driver got out, filled out the paper work, and then changed the tire -- all in about ten minutes. The other guy never moved from where he was sitting on the passenger side -- even when the driver turned his motor off and the truck's inside lights went out.

I put the flat on the back of the Wrangler and drove home an hour and a half later than I had intended. I drove down the same stretch of road I traveled last night about the same time after finding out the owner didn't seem to be willing to think about my proposal for the Bakery.

I rode home on a metaphor: something unexpected took the air out of my tire; I did what I could and called for help, which came; and I drove home, a bit wounded by still able to travel. It's not the most profound comparison anyone ever drew, but it spoke to me. I deeply appreciate the words of encouragement several of you wrote in response to yesterday's post. You, like the tow truck driver, are keeping me on the road.

Peace,
Milton

some dreams do

I brushed up against a dream today but nothing happened.

No, that's not true. About three weeks ago, the manager at the Inn asked me to make a proposal to run the Bakery, which could be a really cool breakfast and lunch coffee house kind of place. I can see it. I worked hard on the proposal to give to the owner when he came back to town last Friday. Today he told me he's going to close the Bakery all together. We had no further discussion.

Though I'm familiar enough with him to know that may not be the last word, I drove home tonight with "No" in my pocket. I turn to songs I love in times like these. One of my favorites, which I referenced before in a different context, keeps the light flickering for me: Steve Earle's "Some Dreams." (You can listen to it here without too much complication.)

When I was a little guy
My daddy told me "Mister,
Don't ever try to climb too high
'Cause it's the fall that gets ya
And some dreams can never come true
They'll never come true"

Well, I heard every word he said
But I don't guess I listened
But every time I banged my head
Against the wall insistin'
That some dreams don't ever come true
Don't ever come true
But some dreams do
If you just hang on
And your heart is true
And your hope is strong

Well, just because you've been around
And had your poor heart broken
That's no excuse for lyin' down
Before the last word's spoken
'Cause some dreams don't ever come true
Don't ever come true
Aw, but some dreams do

When you're feelin' low
And you think you're through
That's when you will know

Yeah, when you wish upon a star
Buddy, don't you miss it
Catch it 'fore it falls too far
Keep it with your secrets
'Cause some dreams don't ever come true
Don't ever come true
Don't ever come true
But some dreams do

I think I'll let him sing me to sleep.

Peace,
Milton