sunday sonnet #8

The sermon today was on the ten lepers whom Jesus healed and the one of them who returned to say, “Thanks.” As I thought about the story, I was struck by how much time we who are accustomed to comfort and privilege spend trying to explain pain and suffering, as though they were things other than life. It seems to me When Bad Things Happen to Good People would not be a best seller in Darfur. Ginger quoted Nouwen today: “Wounds are openings for new vision.”

I guess we should remember Jesus healed them from afar –
they became “clean” as they walked along the way.
After years of being told that they weren’t worth one thin dinar,
perhaps they felt there was nothing left to say.

But one came back to Jesus and sort of shattered the illusion
that the down and out somehow deserve their lot,
and shot down, of course, our own sort of logical conclusion
that the privileged deserve all that we’ve got.

We talk about the nine as if we’d have been the one
aware enough to relish a return;
that’s you and me however, sinking with the setting sun –
that grace is gift is hard for us to learn.

The greatest miracle of attitude
is being healed of our ingratitude.

Peace,
Milton

hope takes a helmet

One of the many things my wife does well is preach.

I look forward to Sundays to hear her offering (no, I don’t get a sneak preview, as a rule) because she listens hard to both God and the world around her before she starts talking. And our world (meaning our personal world) has a lot to say these days: I’ve made yet another career adjustment, we are buying and selling houses so we can make room for her parents to come and live with us as her father’s Alzheimer’s worsens (I just can’t bring myself to say, “progresses”), things are hopping at church, and our growing swirl of friendships here in Durham is proving to be sturdy support.

On Pentecost, she quoted Annie Dillard. The words have yet to let loose of me:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return. (Teaching a Stone to Talk)

I’ve almost stopped in a couple of pawn shops to see if I could find a crash helmet. I need to be reminded to show up awake and ready to engage the God of prairie dogs and platypuses, of cyclones and shooting stars and, well, sea squirts.

Yeah – you heard me. Sea Squirts.

I had never heard of the strange creatures until Ginger mentioned them yesterday (and then – get this – NPR did a story on them today). Turns out these spineless vertebrates share about eighty percent of our genetic map, so they are quickly becoming aides to all kinds of research, not the least of which is Alzheimer’s, which is how Ginger found them as she was reading about what scientists are learning about what is happening to her father. And she was talking about him in the context of Romans 5, and these verses specifically:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

When I was in high school, I had a job as an office boy for a doctor’s clinic. Every afternoon I would drive about fifteen minutes from Westbury High School in Houston to the Clinic of the Southwest and spend a couple of hours doing whatever odd jobs they had for me to do. My ride was timed most everyday to hear Paul Harvey (it was the day of AM radio, after all) and “The Rest of the Story.” Each afternoon, he would unfold the story of someone’s life, usually reaching a point of extreme adversity, tragedy, or failure and then tell us to wait until after the break for (dramatic pause) the rest of the story, which was one of endurance, character, and hope.

The hope, it seemed, never came without the heartache.

I learned from Ginger that the term “Ordinary Time,” which describes the weeks from Pentecost until Advent, is a new term, liturgically speaking and doesn’t mean ordinary as in plain or uneventful, but ordinary as in without special emphasis: rather than looking at one aspect of Jesus’ life, we are looking at the big picture. We have moved from birth to death to resurrection to the birth of the church, now let’s move on to how the story plays in the middle of our polarized culture, in the wake of oil spills, in the continuing fog of war, in our desperate need for crash helmets and sea squirts.

I have to admit the introduction of the sea squirts sent my mind wandering, but only to make a connection to another Annie Dillard story, this time from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

Along with intricacy, thee is another aspect of the creation that has impressed me in the course of my wanderings. Look again at the horsehair worm, a yard long and thin as a thread, whipping through the duck pond, or tangled with others of its kind in a slithering Gordian knot. Look at an overwintering ball of buzzing bees, or a turtle under ice breathing through its pumping cloaca. Look at the fruit of the Osage orange tree, big as a grapefruit, green, convoluted as any human brain. Or look at a rotifer’s translucent gut: something orange and powerful is surging up and down like a piston, and something small and round is spinning in place like a flywheel. Look, in short, at practically anything – the coot’s feet, the mantis’s face, a banana, the human ear – and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He’ll stop at nothing

Utility to the creature is evolution’s only aesthetic consideration. Form fellows function in the created world, so far as I know, and the creature that functions, however bizarre, survives to perpetuate its form. Of the intricacy of form, I know some answers and not others: I know why the barbules on a feather hook together and why the Henle’s loop loops, but not why the elm tree’s leaves zigzag, or why butterfly scales and pollen are shaped just so. But of the variety of form itself, of the multiplicity of forms, I know nothing. Except that, apparently anything goes. This holds for forms of behavior as well as design – the mantis munching her mate, the frog wintering in mud, the spider wrapping a hummingbird, the pine processionary straddling a thread. Welcome aboard. A generous spirit signs on this motley crew.

The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sun-lighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork – for it doesn’t, particularly not even inside the goldfish bowl – but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, it’s soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty in which answers in me a call I do not remember calling and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

In these days where I am once again sharing time and space with teenagers, I see that one thing that still gets traction among adolescents is that cynicism is somehow cool. Let me just say, “No.” Hell, No. Cynicism is cheap and lazy – an escape hatch from both life and learning. If patience leads to endurance and then on to hope, cynicism leads to, well, not much of anything except more cynicism. It’s an existential cul de sac.

And, I must say from personal experience, a seductive one. I have to own up to my own slide into cynicism when I watch the lack of imagination with which most of our governmental leaders appear to approach their jobs. But I am made for more than taking cheap shots at easy targets. I am called to do more than add my voice to the polarizing cacophony of our culture. I am meant for more than pointing out what is wrong, or allowing myself to feel superior. I was breathed into being by the One who dreamed up horsehair worms and sea squirts, who thinks I come in a little lower than the angels and right alongside the Schnauzers, who expects me to live with all the joy and pain that I might endure what it takes to be created in the image of an untamed God.

Hope, my friends, takes a helmet.

Peace,
Milton

the last word

I preached this morning at our church here in Durham as the culmination of a study we did on the Book of Job. This is the text of my sermon, "The Last Word."

Only four Saturdays have passed since a group of us gathered to study the story of Job together, and yet way more than a month of life seems to have passed by since then. One of the things that has changed for me is I have returned to teaching high school English, which means I’m once again reading books with my students. My ninth grade class is reading Night, Elie Weisel’s personal account of surviving not one but five concentration camps as a teenager, finally being freed from Buchenwald by the Allied forces, but not before having lived through brutal and dehumanizing things that hit at the core of his faith. As he describes one experience he writes:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never.

We read those words in class and I thought of Job and the string of surviving servants who showed up to tell him who and what had been destroyed. I thought of Job sitting on the garbage heap, scraping his open sores with a piece of broken pot as his wife implored him to “curse God and die.” I returned to our discussions around the tables in the Fellowship Hall where we listened to Job’s friends try to explain his suffering by blaming him or giving some sort of pat answer, but never really listening, never being willing to share the pain with him. And I wondered why his tragedy didn’t murder God or destroy his faith. “I know my Redeemer lives,” he said, even as he struggled to find God in the midst of his anguish.

We don’t have to look back to Job, or even look far to find similar examples of devastation. This morning, people in Mississippi are digging out from under the damage of the tornadoes that touched down there. The families and friends of the miners who died in West Virginia are gathering for a memorial service. They have still not found the eleven workers who were on the oil rig that blew up earlier this week. Though the stories are no longer attractive to our media, Haiti and Chile and China still live in the aftermath of earthquakes. Ginger and I were in New Orleans this week and heard people tell their stories of life after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. And we have not even talked about Darfur and Congo, AIDS, malaria, or those who starve to death daily in our world, as wellas the personal and overwhelming pain that comes with depression, or Alzheimer’s, or financial hardship, or severe illness.

It doesn’t take long in this life to get to a place where we ask where God is, as Job did, or seek to offer some sort of explanation as to why life has turned sour, as his friends were quick to do. “You’ve done something wrong,” they said to Job. “This must be your fault somehow because God wouldn’t do this to a good person.” “It’s your fault; repent and God will fix everything.”

Isn’t it great to have friends who care?

Job took all that was heaped upon him, including the lectures and advice, and kept calling God to show up and answer for what was going on. Finally, God did show up – or perhaps we are better to say God revealed God’s self because when God spoke the voice came “out of the whirlwind” – from the center of the struggle. God was in the middle of the storm, not as the cause, but as a Presence. And when God spoke, God did not say anything about Job’s sin or who was at fault or why Job had managed to pull the house down on himself and his family. God didn’t give any advice or offer any explanations at all. God asked questions.

Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, so that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it? . . . Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this. Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

God called Job to a different sense of perspective.

Yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of the launching of the Hubble Telescope (as a follow up to our wedding, I’m sure). NPR has a wonderful story asking different scientists to pick out their favorite Hubble image over the years. One chose “The Ultra Deep Field,” which was taken by aiming the telescope at what appeared to be an empty patch in the night sky and left the lens open for about eleven days, soaking up all the light it could see and capturing the oldest light ever seen by humanity. The frame is full of tiny dots of light, each one, the astronomer said, containing a hundred million stars – all in a space we thought was empty.

“When I gaze into the night sky,” the psalmist wrote, “and see the wonders of your hand, who are we as humans that you are mindful of us?”

We are called to hold together the depth of pain and suffering that makes up our world, as we see at Auschwitz or in Rwanda or in the poverty of Haiti or the aftermath of Katrina along the Gulf Coast or in our personal struggles, and the wonder we have been shown by Hubble reminding us that if we leave our eyes open long enough in the dark the light, the ancient light as old as creation, will finally shine.

Francois Mauriac wrote in the foreword to Night,

We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Almighty is the Almighty, the last word for each of us belongs to God.

All is grace. Listen closely: all is grace. We do not earn suffering anymore than we earn the love that God pours out on us from the moment we are breathed into existence. Life is difficult, sometimes even crushing, but not because we deserve to be crushed.

And our God is one who is acquainted with grief, who bears our grief, who never stops making stars, and who speaks out of the storm. Our God is one who responds to our cries, rather than simply answer our questions. Our God is stronger than death and destruction, more tenacious than any cancer or circumstance, more loving than any sense of alienation or worthlessness.

This is our Resurrection Story: all is grace; the last word for each of us belongs to God. And that word is Love: unfailing, unflinching, unending Love. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: random thoughts

Thanks to a link from a friend, I sat down to these words after watching my NCAA Men’s Basketball Bracket go bust, thanks to the upsets of the day:

The world is a confusing place. Correlation looks like causation; the signal sounds like the noise; randomness is everywhere. This raises the obvious question: How does the human brain cope with such an epistemic mess? How do we deal with the helter-skelter of reality? One approach would be to ground all of our beliefs in modesty and uncertainty, to recognize that we know so little and understand even less.

Needless to say, that's not what we do. Instead of grappling with the problem of induction, we believe in God.

In the midst of the randomness that saw my alma mater, the Baylor Bears, win their second game in as many days, after a sixty year drought, I wished for my friend David, who died three months ago by accident and who have been hollering loud enough for me to hear him from Austin. The randomness of Facebook keeps telling me to write on his wall, and I do. I was not the only one who made a comment this evening. Thinking of David took me to another passage from Nora Gallagher’s book, Practicing Resurrection, where she writes about her brother’s death and her grief. She also quotes a friend who is also acquainted with grief and trying to come to terms with the presence of the absence of his loved one.

Mark called me later and said, “While I was hiking up Tunnel Trail, I was thinking about what we talked about and I realized that I needed back then for the priest to enter into poetry because that is where Phil is. He could have said, ‘Well, Phil is at the zoo now.’ Something that would clearly express the fact that he is gone, no longer literal, not here, not visible, but not absent, not without influence, not dead. The problem with the priest’s response was that it was literal, and Phil is not literal anymore! That’s why poetry and art are so important, because that’s where he is. 

“And to go on preaching my little sermonette here, that’s what ails Christianity, this literalness, this imprisonment with the facts of history. When it becomes this, with the insistence on historical authenticity and whether the water really became wine and Jesus literally being raised from the dead, then it loses its whole point, which is to show me where Phil is and to show us how to relate to the earth and be comfortable with mystery.” (67)

My day began with the third of four Saturday morning meetings o a group of us from church are studying the Book of Job. I was interested to find, when I began doing background reading for our study, that most of Job is considered a poem. The early couple of chapters, when God and Satan are deciding what can be done to the man, and the closing chapters, when God speaks, create a prose frame for the poetry of the cycle of advice from Job’s three friends, though their words are not particularly poetic. At one point in our reading today, Job responded,

I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking? (16:2, 3)

When it comes to the reality and randomness of life and grief and suffering, those of us around the table this morning were a well-informed group. If I were to make a list of the pain each one knows or has known and the losses they carry, it would not be hard to prove they understand Job’s suffering on an experiential level. Our discussion was not theoretical. As we talked about the conversation between Job and his friends, we realized they were trying to describe the moral order of the world, to find an explanation for why things work like they do. Somewhere, almost in our DNA it seems, we want to begin that explanation with the idea that good lives are rewarded with good things and evil lives have hell to pay, even though a quick read of the Bible or an evening with the Coen Brothers’ movie of your choice will let you know the universe doesn’t fit into that system. Still, like Job’s friends, we stick with it and end up deciding we must all be bad because we are all suffering, or our God is a violent God.

Neither explanation offers much in the way of poetry or promise. As we talked around the table, what emerged for me was a reminder that experience has more in common with poetry than explanation; and grace is poetry, as is suffering, in its own way. We don’t deserve either, yet they both show up without reason or explanation. And in that spirit, a couple of chapters later, Job says,

O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

In a random act of basketball, the Baylor Bears won tonight and made me miss my friend David even more. It makes no sense at all for him to not be here. There is not an adequate explanation, period. There is, however, poetry – in the sharing of Communion, in the telling of stories, in the laughter my heart hears when I picture him watching the game at a little pub somewhere in heaven -- words full of meaning and mystery that explain nothing and call me to Love.

And so I offer W. S. Merwin’s “Listen” (which I have offered before) because the wind in his words carries the breeze of the Spirit.

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from 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
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.

Thanks.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: don't faith alone

We’ve been spending Saturday mornings during Lent with Job at our church: coffee, fruit, pastries, and suffering – what a way to spend a weekend. I’m the discussion leader and the guy who starts the coffee pot, so I get there early to get both the pot and my mind percolating. This morning we looked at the first cycle of conversations between Job and his three alleged friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (Zogood).

I was rereading passages, browsing through commentaries, and trying to pull my thoughts together when I came across a section in one of the commentaries that talked about the significance of Job’s physical sufferings. The world came crashing in on Job first, with the loss of his possessions, then the loss of his family, and then the infliction of the seeping, painful sores that left him scraping his skin on the dung heap. The reality of his crumbling body brought him face to face with his physical finitude. But there’s more to it than that. The commentator said the significance of the bodily ailments pointed to the fact that our bodies are “organs of perception”: each of us understands the world physically, through our senses and our experiences. We are not objective. What we see and taste and smell and touch and hear and feel is what we experience.

One of the most fascinating things about reading This Is Your Brain on Music was Levitin’s explanation of what happens physically in our brains when we hear a song, and when we are moved emotionally by a melody. The Hebrews understood something we are having to relearn as Westerners drenched in Greek dualism: body, mind, and spirit are intrinsically connected; they cannot be separated. What we experience spiritually has physical ramifications and vice versa. Our bodies are not merely temporal shells for our eternal souls; every last bit of our beings makes us who we are and influences who we can become.

When Ginger was doing her doctoral work at ETS in Detroit, she took a class called “The Body as a Means of Grace.” The textbook was Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork. I remembered the title as I was reading the commentary. During our study time, Ginger talked about the physical work they did – movement, Reiki, meditation – and the spiritual experiences that came about as a result. Our bodies’ knowledge is intimate and direct. It even shows up in our language in ways that slip by us: we are touched by songs and books, moved by music and movies. The words are as physical as the experiences.

When I was on staff at University Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas, one of the pastors from University Christian Church, down the block, came to our staff meeting to talk about similarities and differences in our worship services. When we asked why they observed Communion every week, she answered, “Because we want to experience Christ with all of our senses in worship, not just by sight and hearing.” Then she quoted Psalm 34: “O, taste and see that the Lord is good.”

My Australian blog buddy, Simon Carey Holt, just began a new pastorate and writes beautifully about his first taste of community there:

Once installed last Sunday as the pastor of Collins Street, the very first thing I got to do was to lead the church at the table ... the breaking of bread and sharing of wine. I am glad that’s where it began.

For me, there is no better image of salvation than of a table prepared by God. It is a place of open invitation where all estrangement disappears. It’s a place of extraordinary intimacy but never exclusivity, one of challenge but never judgement; a shared table of healing, sustenance and hope. What’s more, as people of that table we are called to beckon the stranger with the same open hospitality that draws us.

Communion is both a metaphorical and material image of the physicality of our faith. We eat together, we feed each other, and there are always leftovers. The reality that my perception of the world, and of God, is only available to me through my physical senses, meaning there is no way I can be objective and that truth is always going to be larger than I am, means faith, like life, has to be a team sport. Figuring out our faith is the live action version of the fable of the blind men and the elephant: each of us hold of a different part and we need each other for a more complete view.

Don’t eat alone; don’t faith alone, either.

Around our table this morning were some who know firsthand the despair of depression, some who are living through the pain of broken relationships, some who are grieving over the loss of loved ones, some who are living with cancer and other serious illnesses, some contemplating major life changes, and there were only ten of us around the table. As we read aloud what the three friends had to say to Job in the midst of his pain, we found ourselves on both sides of the conversation. We knew what it felt like for well-meaning people to say things that did not help because they felt like they needed to say something to cope with their own sense of helplessness and we knew what it felt like to be one of those well-meaning people wondering what to say and wishing we could do something to help. Sometimes, the best we can do is remember a line from Alice in Wonderland: “Don’t just do something; stand there.”

Tonight, I am reminded of an old story from Martin Bell’s wonderful book, The Way of the Wolf, called “The Porcupine Whose Name Didn’t Matter.” I offer it here, even though it makes for an extra long post, because it belongs.

Once upon a time there was a cautious Porcupine name Joggi. Joggi lived with the mystery of his own life, much as any other porcupine, but he was exceedingly cautious. Joggi lived and loved, laughed and cried tentatively. One might say that anger, frustration, and tenderness had been so delicately woven into the fabric of his person as to make it difficult for us to perceive.

Joggi was cautious in the face of the mystery of life. So cautious, in fact, that almost nobody knew his name. Most of the animals in the forest who had seen the near-sighted porcupine moving slowly about, poking his pointed black nose into the vegetation, bristling and puffing, squinting and stumbling. Few had spoken to him.

Now and then, someone would say hello and attempt to strike up a conversation. It never really led to anything. When asked what his name was, he would answer: "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what my name is, can't you see, what difference does it make? It doesn't matter". More often than not, that would be the end of the conversation.

Joggi could not embrace another, he would not tell anyone his name. And the result was almost always the same -- the other animals avoided him. With one exception, this was Gamiel, the raccoon. It did not bother him when the prickly little porcupine was silent for hours at a time. And he never even thought to ask about Joggi's name. Gamiel could remember very little before the accident, and much of what had happened since was blurred somewhere in the recesses of his brain, all but lost to memory.

Raccoons are generally alert and resourceful creatures with keen perceptions and excellent memories. But all of this had changed. There had been a flash of light and then something hard ripped into the side of his head. His whole body convulsed with pain, white-hot, thrashing, 'God-when-will-it-stop' pain, that pitched him bleeding from the tree into the under-bush. Screaming pain that shrieked behind his eyes the one and only word of hope he knew, and then as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.

Everything changed. He did not even look like a raccoon. The whole left side of his head was missing, he could barely pull himself along with his right front leg. Gamiel had only to look at himself in the forest pond to realize why everyone hurried past when he called out to them. Except, ever since the accident, Gamiel had been totally blind.

Joggi found Gamiel about 2 days after the pain had stopped, and approximately 3 hours after the raccoon had given up all hope. "Is someone there?", Gamiel whispered. At first, Joggi didn't say anything, the near-sighted porcupine moved closer. "You are a raccoon", he said out loud. "Oh yes, indeed I am", Gamiel stuttered. "Only I think something awful has happened to me. I cannot see anything at all, and I can barely move. Please tell me what has happened to me. Am I going to die? Why won't anyone stop when I cry out? Why can't I see? Please, I'm afraid".

And in Gamiel's searching, empty, sightless eyes, tears began to form. Joggi sniffed and said to himself: answer him. Don't just stand there with your spines bristling and your heart pounding, answer him. Joggi spoke with a steady and quiet voice: "I believe you have been shocked. I cannot be certain, of course, but that is my opinion. Are you in a great deal of pain?" "No, at first there was pain, but I can't feel anything now. In fact, my whole left side is numb. No, no more pain. Just, well, nothing".

Joggi was silent. His tiny body shivering, breathing labored, short, difficult breaths. Gamiel spoke in a hoarse voice: "Are you still there?". Joggi's heart beat faster. "Yes, I'm here. I was just wondering what to do now?". "Oh, you don't have to do anything. Honestly, I mean that, you don't have to do anything at all. Just stay with me for a little while. Just stay there. Just don't go away. Please. I'm afraid. You won't go away, will you?" Joggi swallowed hard. "No, no I won't go away". "Thank you", Gamiel said quietly. And then the wounded raccoon fell asleep.

Joggi stood beside Gamiel all that day. Then when evening came, a cool breeze made his spines whistle slightly, the sound woke the raccoon. "Are you there?". "Yes, I told you I wouldn't go away". "I'm hungry". "I thought you might be", Joggi replied. "Can you move at all?". Gamiel stretched his right leg forward and pulled himself along the ground. "Good for you", said Joggi, "that will do nicely. I can bring you food, but you will need to maneuver for yourself in order to get water. I believe you have enough strength to reach the pond, it isn't very far, and I can guide you directly to it. Come on, let's see how it goes".

That was how it began. An unusual partnership perhaps, certainly the rest of the animals in the forest were surprised to see the pair of them moving slowly about, managing to live from one day to the next without really doing much of anything. Occasionally Joggi would describe something for Gamiel, or answer a question, or direct the crippled raccoon toward a tasty morsel of food. Gamiel, for his part, chattered happily, basked in the sun, and generally enjoyed his friend's company.

They made a home for one another, Joggi and Gamiel. Not a regular home, exactly, not a place. More like a shelter from the excessive pain that each of them had known. A coming together of two lonely and frightened creatures. A bond of trust that asked no questions, expected nothing at all except the merciful being together that made waking up tomorrow possible.

Joggi was with Gamiel for one full year before the injured raccoon finally died. It was a quiet event, almost a surprise, but that Joggi had been expecting for so long. Gamiel's strength just finally gave out. "You know, I've been expecting this for quite some time now", Joggi said to the raccoon, who lay their on the ground no longer able to hear. "I'm surprised that you managed to stay alive as long as you did. I knew the day that I found you that it couldn't last, and yet, well, I hoped it might have been a little longer. Do you know what I mean? You see, I never knew anybody very well before. Not that we ever talked much, or anything like that, but I felt like I knew you anyway, even without talking. I have a really hard time talking to anybody, or getting to know anybody. And nobody ever wants to get very close to me because of all these spines that I have sticking out of me. I don't suppose that you ever knew that I had spines sticking out all over me, did you? They're sort of like needles, and they're sharp. I guess they scare everybody a bit. I hope you don't mind my talking so much."

"I really don't know why I'm talking to you now. I really suppose it's just that I had a little more to tell you before you died. I have been wanting to say this for almost a year and never quite found the right time to do it. It's too late now, I realize, but I've been wanting to tell you that it has been an honor to meet you, and that you indeed are a very handsome raccoon. And that I would like to consider you my friend.".

The porcupine cleared his throat. Tears dropped onto his nose. “Tell him,” he said to himself, “don't just stand there with your spines bristling and your heart pounding, tell him.”

"Oh, and by the way, I'd like to tell you what my name is. It's a funny name, I suppose, but I'd like you to know what it is. It's Joggi." Without another word, the tiny porcupine turned away from Gamiel's lifeless body, and began to cry.

“Hospitality is salvation,” says Diana Butler Bass. I think she’s on to something, as are the rest of us.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: don't just do something

The music director at our church, James, was in a car accident and severely injured last weekend. He has an old Cadillac that he was driving to see some friends in another state. Unknown to him, the car had some sort of carbon monoxide leak and he passed out at the wheel. The car crossed the median and dove into a cornfield, setting the corn and the car on fire. He was able, somehow, to get out of the car, get to the road, and flag down help that got him to a hospital. He did not have skin burns, but inhaled a great deal of soot and smoke that burned his lungs. Since Sunday he has been in the hospital in another city, intubated and heavily sedated while they daily go in and try to clean out his lungs. The news today is they have made good progress and the lungs are becoming clear and appear to be healing themselves. There are other questions still to be answered, but we are grateful for the hopeful words.

But being far away, waiting for the next word sucks.

The question bouncing around in my mind and also within our congregation is, “What should we do for him?” It’s an honest question with an answer that is hard to hear: right now all we can do is let him and his wife, Amanda, know we are with them. The feeling reminds me of advice I got from my Director when I began my Clinical Pastoral Education internship. “Sometimes,” he said, “you have to live be words from Alice in Wonderland: ‘Don’t just do something; stand there.’”

I understand and I struggle with trusting a “ministry of presence” is enough.

No, that’s not it. I know from experience that having someone who stays through tough times without doing anything other than not leaving is more than enough. It’s just damn hard work. And it doesn’t feel like enough.

I need to do something tangible to make me feel like I’m helping. To make me feel not helpless. The hard reality I must face is doing something so I feel less helpless is not necessarily doing something that truly ministers to them. Our congregation has done a good job finding things that do help. The choir, for example, has come together to pay to board the couple’s pup while they are away. That’s good work. We have some family connections in the other city that have brought meals and support. But, as Ginger said in her email note to our congregation today, what we can best do is pray and support one another in “this difficult waiting room of life.”

And so we wait. And pray. Together.

Please join us.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: speaking words of wisdom

A number of years ago, Ginger and I had the chance to go to Israel with a group from our church in Winchester. We rode our bus all through Israel and Palestine seeing the places we had only read about, watching much of the Bible come alive in ways we could not have imagined and also visiting the “traditional” sites for many of the happenings in the gospels, which all had churches built over them that were all asking for money. “This is the traditional site for (fill in miracle),” our guide would say, “but this is not where it happened. Centuries of a very lucrative pilgrim/tourist trade had made it necessary to mark the spot, even if the spot was wrong.

On three occasions I remember our guide saying with certainty that where we were was the real deal. One was in the Garden of Gethsemane where she said the root systems of the olive trees go back to Jesus’ time; we were sitting among the same trees where he prayed. The second was across the Kidron valley, entering the Old City. The steps Jesus climbed on the way to Caiaphas’ house were still in use; we walked that day where Jesus walked. The third was inside the church in Nazareth, which was built over a spring she said had always been there; Mary would have come there to draw water in the dusty little village as her children ran and played at her feet.

The centuries of “biblical” art that stand between us and the afternoon the angel showed up to tell Mary what was happening to her leave us with images of a woman draped in fine linens being told she would give birth to a boy that looks, in the paintings, more like Giuseppe than Jesus, gilding over all of the grit and gruesome that made up her life; ours, too.

Nazareth was a no count little village hardly worth putting on the map, if there had been maps. The angel probably had to clear the dust from his throat before he began the proclamation and you have to wonder how long he had to practice before he could look this poor little girl in the eye and say, “Blessed are you among women.” She had no idea what that blessing meant, other than to respond, “Let it be as you said.”

My brother was the first person I ever heard talk about “the paradox of blessing” offered to Mary. Yes, she would be the one to bring Jesus into the world, to be the deliverer of the Incarnation, and she would watch him grow in ways she did not understand and suffer and die. Such is the paradox of blessing. However Lennon and McCartney brushed up against it, they understood when they wrote,

when I find myself in times of trouble
mother Mary comes to me
speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Yesterday, as Ginger was pouring the cup to serve Communion, she said, “And Jesus took the cup and poured – in a room that was not nearly this quiet.” The downside of our reverence is we sanctify the humanity out of the very events that speak to all that it means to be truly human. Mary had to have had less than the ideal pregnancy ending with giving birth in a barn behind a less-than-five-star inn. However romantic our crèche scenes appear, with the animals gathered round, I can’t imagine it being much help to have the cattle lowing and doing everything else that cows do while she was in labor. For God to choose to enter the world in the person of Jesus was as gritty as it was glorious. The angels may have announced his coming, but Jesus came into the world on the bottom rung, at the place, as Bruce Cockburn says (and my friend Bill reminded me) you have to "kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight.”

On this day that the church decided to calendar as the one when the angel visited Mary, I offer Patty Griffin’s song, “Mary,” because it helps make Christmas a flesh and blood event for me.

Mary you're covered in roses
You're covered in ashes
You're covered in rain
You're covered in babies
You're covered in slashes
You're covered in wilderness
you're covered in stains
You cast aside the sheet,
You cast aside the shroud
Of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
On some sunny day and always stay
Mary

Jesus says Mother I couldn't stay another day longer
Flys right by me and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Mary she moves behind me
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere
Everytime the snow drifts,
Everytime the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts,
She's always there

Jesus said Mother I couldn't stay another day longer
Flys right by me and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Mary you're covered in roses,
You're covered in ruin
You're covered in secrets
Your'e covered in treetops,
You're covered in birds
who can sing a million songs without any words
You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud
of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
on some sunny day and always stay
Mary

In my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me . . .



Peace,
Milton

tell me a story

I come from a family of storytellers.

Actually, I come from a family of slightly exaggerated storytellers. We tell good stories and we feel free to alter the details to spice it up a little, too. I love to listen to a story, or read one, or even watch one, almost as much as I like to tell them. A great story leaves an indelible mark on our hearts. Like a great melody, it inhabits and haunts and pulls up feelings with a simple phrase, reminding us we have been changed by our listening. We are no longer the same.

Today was “Mountain Sunday” at our church (as well as Stewardship Sunday and Thanksgiving Sunday and the Last Sunday in Ordinary Time). The title refers to the music we sang and heard today, which came mostly from Appalachian and gospel traditions, both of which know of and speak from a deep acquaintance with both suffering and gratitude. And so, our service began

I am a poor wayfaring stranger
traveling through this world of woe
but there’s no sickness toil or danger
in that bright land to where I go

From there we wandered across rivers and up and down mountains through our songs and scriptures, until it was time for Carla, our associate pastor, to preach. She began her sermon by talking about stories and then saying she was going to tell part of hers, I leaned in. She told us about how her family settled in Charlotte and survived the coming and going of the textile mill, and how they built homes to be close to one another. As she talked about their Thanksgiving traditions, she told of one tragedy that had befallen the family – the death of a child – and how that marked the holiday for all the years after. As she described one of her relatives, she used a descriptive phrase that turned the story from information to incarnation as she spoke of the “sacred sorrow so bound up with his gratitude.”

Her words landed on me with resonance and power. In the same moment, I knew she was right and I wondered how it is the two are so inextricably tied together. From my English teacher days I remember a story needs conflict or suffering to move it along and to move it toward redemption or reconciliation or even disappointment. What the stories tell us is we were built to learn from our suffering, not simply to endure it. Perhaps that is how stories were born in the first place – the good ones, anyway. Carla had a phrase for that as well: good stories are those that shape our souls into vessels to hold our gratitude.

Her words made me wonder what kind of story I’m telling and how well the stories I hear and tell mold my soul into a thanksgiving tank, if you will. So many of the gospel hymns tell stories of heaven. We even closed our service with a rocking rendition of

some glad morning wihen this life is o’er
I’ll fly away . . .

Many of those songs were born out of suffering, yet their response is more than asking for relief. It’s not about getting out, it’s about getting through. Gratitude grows when we trust that suffering is not the last word.

The story is not yet over.

Suffering that doesn’t breed thankfulness turns to despair. Gratitude that is not informed by grief may quench our souls only briefly, but quickly evaporates. Memory – remembrance is the thing that binds the two so essentially and stories remind us to remember, as the saying goes, who we are and whose we are.

And I remembered this morning, thank you.



Peace,
Milton