away or toward

Tuesday morning I went to work late so I could cook breakfast for a meeting with Clergy Beyond Borders who were meeting at our church as a part of their national tour. I made Blackberry French Toast and Figs Stuffed with Goat Cheese. And then I sat down to eat around a table of people of faith in God and in one another. There were three imams, two rabbis, a Fransiscan priest, some Protestant ministers, a couple of Unitarian-Universalist ministers, and some non-minister types as well. We ate and we talked.

As we talked, I realized I had been unwittingly prepared for the encounter by my friend Terry Allebaugh, whom I’ve mentioned before as the best harmonica player I have ever heard and who also is the founder and director of Housing for New Hope, an organization committed to ending homelessness in Durham. After our inter-faith service on September 11, he commented that he was moved to think that people were going two directions on that day: some were running away from the burning buildings and others were running into them to see whom they could save. Then he went on to say he wondered sometimes which way he would have run had he been in New York that day. “Then again,” he said, “it’s a live question everyday: which direction am I going? Depending on the day, it could go either way.”

Between Sunday and Tuesday, Terry’s words haunted me – and sent my mind and heart on meaningful sojourns. First, I thought of Jesus’ admonitions about the wide and narrow ways, and how few found the narrow way. Perhaps, I thought, the narrow may might be the road running toward. As we went around the table at the breakfast and those who were a part of CBB shared their experiences, they talked about taking time to listen to one another’s stories and to eat together – yet another narrow road. Taking time to listen doesn’t make most schedules these days.

Then I thought of the words of one of my favorite theologians, George Carlin, who had a great routine (that I was unable to find on Youtube) built around the idea that we as humans only do two basic things: we go out and then we come back.

We run away and we run into.

At the breakfast, they passed around a sheet with the “30 Commandments of Inter-Religious Dialogue” listed, which was written by Imam Yahya Hendi, “reflecting on fifteen years of experience in inter-religious dialogue.” The list was brilliant.

5. Thou shall never apologized for what is authentic in your own tradition.
8. Thou shall be quick to apologize and slow to take offense. And never too arrogant to say, “I am sorry.”
10. Thou shall accept the passion which others bring to the dialogue.
17. Thou shall not belittle nor misinterpret a smile.
20. Thou shall be inclusive in your language and actions.
21. Thou shall be patient.
24. Thou shall be courageous.
25. Thou shall be compassionate.

And then there was Number 26: Thou shall have hope.

When it was my turn to speak, I pointed to Number 26 to say it was a beautiful and difficult commandment. I said there, as I did in my last post, that fear had become the primary American value, which made listening of little value. We know how to run to opposite polls and yell at each other. To have hope is both crucial and difficult.

Imam Hendi listened well and responded by telling his story.

Imam Hendi and me

“My background is Palestinian,” he said. “If you look closely, you can see this scar on my face.” Under his mustache was a thin line that ran from his lip into his cheek. “When I was seven, I was beaten by several Israeli soldiers. I am now forty-five and I still don’t know why. But I made a choice after that beating to learn about those who had hurt me. So I learned Hebrew and I learned about Judaism and I learned how to talk to them. I have hope.”

“I do, too,” I answered. “I am just struck as we sit here at how utterly futile it seems in the face of everything that is happening. And how much it matters that we commit our lives to fail boldly in God’s name, to have faith in God and in one another.”

The most profound way we can set our lives to run into – to run toward – is to run toward each other. As I write that sentence, I realize it feels easier to run toward the inter-religious dialogue than an intra-Christian discussion sometimes. I see many of those with whom I share a Baptist heritage whose pain and hurt has led them to see faith and the church as something to grow out of, or grow beyond, or run away from. I pray that is not the final direction they choose.

Deuteronomy 28:6 says, “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out” – a benediction for both directions of our lives, for, as Terry says, on any given day we don’t know which way we will be moving. And, as George Carlin says, it’s always one or the other. Whichever the direction, may it be with intention, courage, and hope.

I close with the benediction from our service at Pilgrim last Sunday:

Leader: May the Lord bless you and keep you.
People: May God’s face shine upon you and may God be gracious to you.
Leader: May God give you grace this day never to sell yourself short.
People: Grace to risk something big for something good.
Leader: Grace to remember that the world is now to dangerous for anything but truth.
People: And too small for anything but love.

Peace,
Milton

shameless commerce

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

Should you ever desire a copy.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: recipe for living

Ginger and I have spent the day around the house getting it ready for our new housemate and dear friend, Cherry, who has packed up the plans in her car and is leaving Boston to come and live with us here in the Bull City. In the process of our cleaning, I came across Congregational Chow, a cookbook I helped put together with the youth group at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas when I was youth minister there – in 1986.

My favorite section of the book came about at the suggestion of someone else in the church, and that was to ask the children in our preschool Sunday School classes to give us their favorite recipes and then to add them to the cookbook verbatim, which we did. Here are a couple of them:

BAKED POTATO
Take one Irish potato and put it in the microwave. Cook for 50 minutes. It’s done because the bell rings. Put butter and cheese on it. Eat it. (Alison, age 5)

CORN
Green corn with butter. add pepper and salt, stir. Put it in the oven at 68 degrees. Cook for 20 minutes, then put lettuce on it. It’s ready to eat. (Wesley, age 4)

TURKEY AND DRESSING
Put turkey sauce on the turkey and put salt on top. Cook it on top of the stove for 25 mintues or so. It’s done when it gets real dark. Mix up some popcorn and a drink to go with it. (Margie, age 5)

OATMEAL COOKIES
Take oatmeal and put it in a big bowl. Then put it in another bowl. Add pepper and milk. Stir and stir. Bake it in a hot oven at one degree for just forty weeks. (Ethel Mae, age 3)

PUMPKIN PIE
Take out a pan, scrub it out if it’s dirty. Now that you have a clean pan, take some dough and roll it out and then cook it. After you cook it, you put different color dots on it. Put about four glasses of cooked pumpkin in it. Then you put orange icing and black for the eyes and mouth. Then it’s done. (Margie, age 5)

What I love about the recipes is the perspective. The kids were telling how they saw those things being made, remembering details that made the most impression, or perhaps repeating things they heard in the kitchen (“Now that you have a clean pan . . .). An pastor friend of mine asked his four year old son what he thought his dad did for a job and the boy thought for a minute and said, “You talk on the phone a lot.” That’s what it looked like from where he stood. Though our perspective may widen as we age, we still make up our own recipes.

The events of the past few days (sorry, can’t go into more detail) have reminded me that, though we are all trying to make a life, we can come up with very different recipes for what that life looks like. In a series of interactions this week I saw how one person’s primary ingredient was power. It’s how she evaluates relationships and responds to them. She wants the power and doesn’t want to share it. For the most part, that ingredient doesn’t much show up in my recipe, so I had to work hard to figure out what was happening between us because what I was saying was not what was being heard.

When we start to talk about faith we have the same issues. Growing up Southern Baptist, I was brought up with a lot of battle imagery. Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war. We talked about fighting Satan and being prayer warriors. The overarching images of Christianity were ones of conflict and conquest, and we were in it to win it. The difficulty with that recipe, for me, is wars require enemies. Once one is defeated, another must take its place or the recipe falls apart. The circle gets smaller and smaller until we are left shooting at each other.

The recipe of faith I have been working on for most of my adult life is less about conflict than it is about community. It’s less about measuring up than making room, less about who is right than who is here, less about wars than welcomes. I’m pointing out the differences to point to the difficulty of understanding just how the other recipe works. Some who see themselves fighting for truth might look at my recipe and think it ranks right up there with Margie’s pumpkin pie – well-intentioned, but lacking a complete understanding. When I have written about responding to violence with violence being neither a successful nor Christian response, I’ve gotten comments trying to help me out of my naiveté. I’m not naïve, I just don’t think violence is a solution. I think it’s safe to say most of history will bear me out.

At the risk of stretching my metaphor farther than it is prepared to go, and going back to my experiences this week, the challenge for me is how do I learn to share the table with those whose recipes for living are so different than mine. The situations this week were more than passing glances. I have to deal with this person on pretty much a daily basis, both of us trying to make something of the situation, and both coming at it from very different perspectives and seeking very different outcomes. The best way for me is to start with an ingredient Ginger added to my recipe years ago with a quote she passed along: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” I can follow that by remembering I’m responsible for the life I’m making – for my recipe – and not for the other person’s. I need to stick to what I trust is true regardless of how she chooses to respond.

This is advanced cooking – and hard to do.

Then again, I knew it couldn’t be as easy as Margie made it sound.

Peace,
Milton

late night thanks

It’s late. Everyone else in the house has gone to bed and I’m waiting for the last pie (of eight) to finish baking so I can sleep as well. Here as Thanksgiving Eve gives way to Turkey Day, I’m in full blown food mode, so this time food is food more than metaphor. Here’s our menu for tomorrow:

deep fried turkey (hey – I’m in the South now)
cornbread dressing (my mother’s recipe)
buttermilk mashed potatoes
green bean casserole (Ginger’s favorite)
roasted corn and crushed pineapple risotto
chipotle sweet potato and pecan gratin
maple glazed brussels sprouts
roasted butternut squash with plantains (I'm making this one up -- I'll let you know how it goes)
refrigerator rolls

And for dessert:

amazing pumpkin pie
sweet potato pie
apple pie
pecan pie
brown sugar buttermilk pie
blueberry pie

I’m a thankful boy.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: seven summers at the beach

We’ve just spent the last nine hours traveling miles and miles of interstate and classic rock and got back to Durham to find a small package on our doorstep I have been waiting for. Back in September I began putting together a book of poetry and recipes from this blog as a way to say goodbye to New England. The book is called Seven Summers at the Beach, which is how long we lived in Marshfield. I took advantage of a very kind offer from Jeff to do the design work and layout. (Big props to Jeff.) The book is now done, thanks to Lulu.com, and available at my “storefront” there. Though there is still much for me to learn on the marketing and publicizing end, I’m anxious to let you know the book is there. Lulu is a self-publishing site that prints the books as they are ordered. I got mine in about a week. It costs $15 for the print book and $8 for the e-book download. (I realize this isn’t necessarily the stuff Lenten meditations are made of, but this has been a long time coming).


If you’re interested, you can click the Lulu button to the left of this post, click on the book title above, or go to my storefront and follow the instructions.

Peace,
Milton

new to our turkey table

Here are a few of the new recipes I'm trying out this year. Some have already been checked out in the Don't Eat Alone Test Kitchen, others we'll all taste for the first time on Thursday. I think they'll all measure up just fine.

Here are a couple more vegetable ideas:

• roasted red curry carrots
• green bean casserole (from scratch)
• sweet potatoes and apples in browned butter

And for your dessert table:

• black and blue berry pie
• state fair pecan pie
• rachel's nut brittle

Happy eating.

Peace,
Milton

ideas for turkey day

I made it to Birmingham all in one piece; both me and my Cherokee were weary and heavy laden. Though still in transition, at least Ginger and I are in the same place, which is my in-laws' house. Next week, my parents are coming to Birmingham and we are all going to celebrate Thanksgiving together. With that in mind, I thought I would go back through my recipes and index some I think might be worth looking at as you gather around your table of gratitude.

Here is a turkey recipe that has proven to be a favorite for years now.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with a couple of soups:

• pumpkin-apple soup
• curried squash soup
• parsnip and apple soup
• autumn bisque

Moving on to breads:

• I learned to make refrigerator rolls from my mother;
• this monkey bread recipe is all about convenience -- and it tastes good;
• pineapple cornbread is a twist on a couple of old standards.

Here are a couple of vegetable ideas:

• brussels and berries
• maple glazed brussels sprouts

OK, so I need to cook something other than brussels sprouts. Here's a recipe that combines squash, apples, and onions:

• autumn galette

In the tuber department, try these:

• three potato au gratin
• sweet potato salad
• sweet potato polenta

And in our miscellaneous department:

• cranberry sweet tarts
• pilgrim punchers

I have a few other recipes we are trying out in our Don't Eat Alone Test Kitchens and I know I haven't posted any desserts. Stay tuned -- more on the way.

Peace,
Milton