the week of luxurious leftovers

In the days when I was actively engaged as a songwriter, my friend Billy and I maintained the practice of sending each other three titles and four lines of verse every night. Each of the titles had to be able to be explained (“This song would be about . . .) and the lines needed to be attached to one of them. We were writing long distance in the days before email and texting, so we faxed our work back and forth, often in the early hours of the morning. I still have the notebooks filled with great titles whose ideas were never fully birthed.

My practice for a number of years has been to carry a Moleskin notebook in my back pocket, which is the receptacle for ideas, possibilities, sermon notes, grocery lists, reminders, addresses, and just about anything else that needs to be written down -- including the occasional title, even though I haven’t written a song in a long, long time. Looking back through my notes on Italy, I found a title suggested by my friend Lori, who was one of the participants in our Days in the Villa. One morning after breakfast, she said, “You need to write one post called ‘The Week of Luxurious Leftovers.’”

Here it is.

A professional kitchen lives and dies on its food costs. One of the ways that you control how much you spend is by how well you use what you buy. When I managed the kitchen at Duke, we never had a big budget, so one of the things I learned how to do well was use ingredients in more than one way. In my kitchen at home, I have always enjoyed figuring out what to do with what’s left over, which is one of the reasons I love making soups. The best ones have no recipe, you just use what you have. One night at the villa, I made polenta that I baked and cut into squares and served with Chicken Limone and grilled vegetables (expertly grilled by Lori’s husband, Terry). At the end of the meal, we had polenta and veggies left over. For breakfast the next morning, I pan-fried the polenta, made a hash out of the vegetables by adding a little prosciutto, and poached some eggs to top it all off: uova della villa. Another night we took the left over risotto, formed it into cakes, dipped it in egg wash and bread crumbs, and pan-fried them to go with a roasted pork tenderloin. One of the most enjoyable parts of the week was figuring out what to do with what was left from before.

When I open the fridge to see what I have to work with, whatever I’m in, I work to think of what might be rather than what was. Sure, there are times when we reheat a dish as it was and eat it a second time, but I’m talking about finding the containers with leftovers that are not enough on their own or who have lost their companions. I try to think about combinations that were not there before, about ways the colors and textures and tastes of the foods can compliment each other and become something new, even though nothing is. So leftover polenta becomes a variation on eggs Benedict, several meals of leftover vegetables become an improvised minestrone, or pita bread becomes crust for a pizza topped with cheese and apples.

Life is about leftovers more often than it is about new things. Few of us ever step where no one has gone before, think things no one has thought, do what no one has ever done and (not but) we take the pieces of what has been handed down and used before and make something new with our lives. Both things are true. No one has been more before, just as no one has ever been you. The recipes of our lives, if you will, are new offerings when we choose to look for what might be rather than continuing to use the menus handed down. Our plates fill up with grief and grace, with hope and heartache, with joy and pain, disappointment, surprise, anger, compassion, longing and love. What we make of the leftovers is up to us.

The stuff I find in the fridge is easier to manipulate that the stuff that fills up life, certainly, yet making the most of the leftovers in either arena requires of me to take my time, to move deliberately, and -- most of all -- to make sure I have help. That’s right: don’t cook alone. Our week of leftovers became luxurious because we had time to make it so. The best dishes take time: healing, befriending, dreaming, loving.

Now, why don’t we can see what we can make of what we have left?

Peace,
Milton

he who has ears to hear . . .

It was a little after eight when the audiologist came out into the waiting room to get me. I followed her back to the room where we had sat the day before and I listened to her tell me about what could be done to compensate for my hearing loss. We looked at different kinds of hearing aids, ranging from moderately expensive to sell-your-kidney expensive, and talked about what some of the changes in technology could offer me. We settled on a mid-range pair, as far as pricing was concerned, and she said she only needed the evening to program them. I came home, slept restlessly, and returned.

She was deliberate as she put the pieces of the hearing aids together and explained how the microphone would cradle itself in the bend of my ear and then a small clear tube with a small cone-shaped cover would run down the front of my ear and into the hearing canal. She helped me put them on and then she said she had to run a quick test before she turned them on. What followed was a series of sounds that felt like a mash-up of an old dial-up modem and the sequence the aliens played in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then, without much fanfare, the room exploded with sound. Layers of noise, or rustles and twinkles, of breaths and buzzes, snaps and clicks. I felt like I could hear my eyelids blinking.

“They’re on now,” she said.

“((((((((I know)))))))),” I replied. Even my voice was clearer. Unleashed. “It’s so loud,” I said. I had forgotten.

“It’s going to feel really loud because your brain has forgotten how to process all of these sounds. It’s going to have to relearn how to hear. And it will. You’re going to do great with these.” She was grinning. I think I could hear her smile. I could hear mine, too. We continued to talk and she explained how to raise and lower the volume to suit my needs. She also told me the aids were set to give me about eighty percent of my hearing back because one hundred percent might be too much to take. She turned it up to ninety just to show me. I’m going to have to work up to it. There’s too much to hear right now.

After a few minutes, I excused myself to go to the restroom -- my first venture out into the world, if you will. I actually heard the conversation of the people walking in front of me, along with the clicking of their shoes. The flush of the toilet was Niagara Falls. And do you have any idea how much noise a zipper makes? As I returned, all I could think about was Buffy the Vampire Slayer in one of my favorite episodes, “The Aspect of the Demon,” where she can hear everyone’s thoughts and feelings to the point of being overwhelmed by them. It seemed that everywhere I turned I was hearing the sounds of silence: noise where I had only heard nothing.

I got in the car to come home and turned down the radio for the first time I can remember. I could hear the turn of the key, the slide of my sandal against the floor mat, the rush of the air conditioner, the passing of the ticket to the parking attendant. From the clicking of the blinker to the crunch of the gravel in the driveway to the sound of my feet on the front porch -- I heard them all, I heard them all, I heard them all. I felt like the people in Pleasantville when they started to see in color. I have 3-D glasses for my ears.

I baked this afternoon (there’s a new recipe) to take cookies with me to the Apple Store and relished in the sound of the scoop in the flour canister, the crack of the egg shells, the whir of the mixer. I think I could even hear the cookies baking. The most shocking moment was walking into the store, which is an assault on the senses anyway. As they snacked, someone asked me how I was doing and I told them I had just gotten hearing aids. It was the first time since I put them in this morning that I had had the chance to tell someone who wasn’t family. Those who asked also took time to listen well.

At the end of the night, I was going into the break room to clock out when I passed one of the guys who seemed in a hurry to get out the door. I wished him well as he flew past me, and he returned the greeting. I sat down at the computer and I heard him call my name. “Milton -- congratulations on your hearing aids. I had no idea you needed them. But that must be an amazing feeling. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” I said. And he went on his way.

I came home tonight to find the yard filled with screaming crickets and other creatures, a symphony of creation I have not heard since I can remember. I look forward to my brain digging back through the stacks of old forgotten vinyl in my mind, pulling out sounds I haven’t thought of in years and letting them find me again, thanks to the little computers that have hitched a ride on the backs of my ears. I am grateful to be disquieted by the cacophony of creation, thankful to find my voice does not have to be so loud.

Yes, the sounds of the city seem to me so good.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: much like any other day

Today is a day much like any other day.

In the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this is the day in the middle. Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our Easter story goes the opposite direction, in a way, starting with the ending and then moving to beginning again. Either way, Saturday is the day in the middle. Much like any other day.

This morning, I sat around a table at church with ten Pilgrims (as we call ourselves) who had come to walk the Stations of the Cross set up in our sanctuary by our wonderful pastoral intern, Kyle. The stations were both thoughtful and tactile, involving a number of our senses to get the full picture. Before we gathered to eat, we gathered in the sanctuary for prayer and Ginger asked me to sing “Were You There?” Our connection to the song goes back to our days in Winchester, Massachusetts when Jim, a wonderful man with an amazing voice used to close the Maundy Thursday service with the first two verses of the song (as I sang them this morning):

were you there when they crucified my lord?
were you there when they crucified my lord?
oh – sometimes it causes me to tremble tremble tremble
were you there when they crucified my lord?

were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
oh – sometimes it causes me to tremble tremble tremble . . .

He always stopped short of finishing the last verse and we left the service in darkness to go and wait for the ending to come. The question in the song is interesting because it begs to be answered. I don’t hear it as rhetorical. And the answer is, “No. I wasn’t there.” I try to get close, to learn, and to remember what has been passed down, but I was not there.

I am here in the in-between of Saturday afternoon, a day much like any other day.

And much like any other day, I have been mining for poems, which I believe to be why God created the Internet. I was looking for poems that spoke to the middle, to the unfinished, to living in the everyday. (I am also quoting excerpts; please follow the links to read them in their entirety.) I went first to an old friend, Stanley Kunitz. I actually met him at the one Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival I have been able to attend. It was a year or so before he died. “The Layers” is one of my favorite poems. The last part of it reads:

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face,
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

In the wreckage of the Crucifixion, I love the call to live in the layers of grief and hope and not on the litter of what might have been. We are not yet done. As I continued mining, I found another Kunitz poem that was new to me called “Passing Through.” The closing lines read:

Maybe it’s time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

At the Waco Mammoth Site the other day we learned there were layers of mammoth bones, each one from a different cataclysmic flood event that drowned and buried the animals. The dust we borrow for our days has been handed down. Though we weren’t there when they crucified Jesus, those who walked with him have been turned into words that have resonated down the days through the passing of the Bread and the Cup, through the telling of the story, through the living of these days that are one much like the other. And so at breakfast this morning one of the women at the table began talking about the “Mary Magdalene Moments” she had had during the day, things that had made her stop and wonder, “I wonder if this is how Mary felt?”

We may not have been there, but we can find the feelings, the resonance, the continuity in the layers of life than make up our faith. One more poetic gem. James Galvin end his poem, “The Story of the End of the Story,” with these two lines:

Real events don't have endings,
Only the stories about them do.

We are five days away from marking six months since Reuben, my father-in-law, died yet his story is not over any more than our grief is complete. Though many years separate me from my days in Lusaka or Nairobi or Fort Worth or Boston or Winchester or Marshfield those stories don’t feel finished either. There have been endings, yes – and changes. And losses. Plenty of losses. But looking back on those days is more than an archaeological dig through bones of days gone by. Something still lives in those layers, something that gives greater significance to these days much like any other day, these days in the middle between endings and beginnings and beginnings again. I was not there when they crucified Jesus, or laid him in the tomb, or even when he rose up from the grave.

But I am here on this day, much like any other day.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: nod over coffee

Mark Heard’s song “Nod Over Coffee” has been playing in my head since I read about the consequences of the invention of the minute hand in Adam Frank’s book, About Time. I clocked in for my nine hours at the computer store today and clocked out tired and worn and happy to come home. I will let the song be my melody for sleep this evening with this clip from Pierce Pettis, Grace Pettis, and Jonathan Kingham. First, Mark Heard’s lyric:

nod over coffee

all the unsaid words that I might be thinking
and all the little signs that I might give you
they would not be enough
no they would not be enough

so we nod over coffee and say goodbye
smile over coffee and turn to go
we know the drill and we do it well
we love it, we hate it
ain't that life

ain't that the curse of the second hand
ain't that the way of the hour and the day

if I weren't so alone and afraid
they might pay me what I am worth
but it would not be enough
you deserve better

so we nod over coffee and say goodbye
do whatever has to be done again today
get in the traffic and time will fly
look at the sun and pray for rain

ain't that the curse of the second hand
ain't that the way of the hour and the day

the dam of time cannot hold back
the dust that will surely come of these bones
and I'm sure I will not have loved enough
will not have loved enough

if we could see with wiser eyes
what is good and what is sad and what is true
still it would not be enough
could never be enough

so we nod over coffee and say goodbye
bolt the door it's time to go
into the car with the radio on
roll down the window and blow the horn

ain't that the curse of the second hand
ain't that the way of the hour and the day



Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: bear with me

In my post yesterday I quoted from Bruce Springsteen’s keynote address at South-by- Southwest, which I would like to repeat:

The purity of human expression and experience is not confined – there’s no pure way of doing it; there’s just doing it . . . . At the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that is what’s valuable.

After seeing him in concert last night in Greensboro, I must report the man walks the walk (rocks the rock) as well as he talks the talk. At 62, the Boss shows no signs of slowing down or gives any indication that the point of his evening is to leave it all on the stage. If rock and roll were a religion, Bruce would be a Pentecostal evangelist. With his clarion call still ringing in my ears, I heard the music start all over again when I read this sentence in Art & Fear:

To make art is to sing with your human voice. (117)

May I offer a mash up, if you will? There’s no pure way of doing it, there’s just doing it; at the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your faith that is what’s valuable. To make faith is to sing with your human voice.

Here is one of the reasons Jesus matters: he was fully human, which is to say being human is not a bad thing, not an evil thing, not a destructive thing. Being human is who we were made to be. Bruce sang, and a coliseum of voices along with him, of what it means to be resiliently human:

we are alive
and though our bones are alone here in the dark
our souls and spirits rise
to carry the fire and light the spark
to fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart

The reason we all sang along, or at least one of them, is because he sings about the truth of life that lives amidst the contradictions and grief, of the light that shines indefatigably in the darkness. We are the dry bones singing and dancing. Every damn day. It is the melody of art and faith, our best song in our human voices, embracing the life we have been given to live. Back to Art and Fear -- Bayles and Orland close their book by saying:

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot – and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice. (118)

I’m a quote ahead of myself. I need to back up a page or two to the set up for the paragraph you just read:

Answers are reassuring, but when you’re onto something really useful, it will probably take the form of a question. . . . Over the long run, the people with interesting answers are those who ask interesting questions. (112-113)

Not long after I re-read those words, I came across my friend Jimmy’s thoughts on his Facebook page this morning:

It didn't seem questions had much place in my faith tradition. I remember asking questions, but, there were always answers. Life is not a math challenge where all the numbers add up to a simple resolution. Neither are questions.

Jesus is the answer, says the old gospel song, backed up by all sorts of good intentions. No. Jesus asks the questions. Where are your accusers? Do you want to get well? Do you love me? Jesus calls us to embrace the uncertainty. Consider the lilies. Walk the second mile. Take care of the people who can’t take care of you in return. Love your enemies.

Oh – there’s one more thread in my tapestry: this line from Mary Oliver’s “Spring,” which graced the Writer’s Almanac today:

There is only one question
How to love the world.

Wait. That’s not fair. A good line from a great poem deserves to be seen in its natural habitat. Here’s the whole thing.

Somewhere
      a black bear
           has just risen from sleep
                and is staring

down the mountain.
     All night
          in the brisk and shallow restlessness
               of early spring

I think of her,
    her four black fists
        flicking the gravel,
               her tongue

like a red fire
    touching the grass,
        the cold water.
              There is only one question:

how to love this world.
    I think of her
        rising
               like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
    the silence
        of the trees.
              Whatever else

my life is
    with its poems
        and its music
             and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
    coming
       down the mountain,
            breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
    her white teeth,
       her wordlessness,
            her perfect love.

The fact that I went to Baylor notwithstanding, I love a good bear metaphor. And I’m back to Lyle, or at least his cover of Steve Fromholtz’s song:

some folks drive the bears out of the wilderness
some to see a bear would pay a fee
me I just bear up to my bewildered best
and some folks even seen the bear in me

Oliver’s bear comes lumbering out of hibernation into a world exploding with possibilities and dangers, callings and contradictions, reminding us we follow a similar trajectory: sometimes bewildered, sometimes uncertain, sometimes hungry, sometimes hopeful, and always called to love with all the force and fervor of a bear looking to break a winter’s fast or Bruce belting out the final chorus of “Born to Run.”

We are alive. And human. And are called to love the world: to relish the uncertainty, to dance in the dark, to make faith by singing in our human voice:

everybody has a hu-hu-hungry heart.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- Sic 'em, Bears.

advent journal: road trip

road trip

here is a well-traveled
metaphor: life is a road
a highway headed west
wait -- not the interstate

think two lane blacktop
that hits all the lights
in every small town
intentional inconvenience

that fills the booths in
soul food cafés filling
stations of the heart
where whoever comes

out to the car or
up to the table is
wearing a name tag
and a big smile maybe

sadness in their eyes
either one an invitation
we are people whose lives
are drowning in details
without express lanes

waiting to see what lies
just beyond the bend
of the next sorrow
traveling side by side

on our way home full
of grief and gratitude

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: the double nickel manifesto

I had not intended to publish a manifesto today, or any day for that matter, but this post at brainpickings.com set me to thinking what my manifesto would be at this juncture of my existence. Before I could begin to answer that question, however, I wanted to figure out exactly what a manifesto was. I was familiar with the word, but in a sort of cultural sense. I wanted more specificity. I found this from the Online Etymological Dictionary:

manifesto
1644, from It. manifesto "public declaration explaining past actions and announcing the motive for forthcoming ones," originally "proof," from L. manifestus (see manifest).

I then went in search of personal manifestos and found several here. I offer some of the highlights. Frank Lloyd Wright wrote a list of “fellowship assets” for his apprentices:

1. An honest go in a healthy body.
2. An eye to see nature.
3. A heart for nature.
4. Courage to follow nature.
5. The sense of proportion (humor).
6. Appreciation of idea as work and work as idea.
7. Fertility of imagination.
8. Capacity for faith and rebellion.
9. Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance.
10. Instinctive cooperation.

I love Number Eight.

John Maeda, the president of the Rhode Island School of Design offers ten laws for business, design, and life.

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Learn. Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.
9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Leo Tolstoy had some interesting ideas which included:

Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater.

I have spent the last week working on what I am calling “The Double Nickel Manifesto.” I am happy to admit that every item represents something borrowed and learned from someone else. After all, originality, as one of my preaching professors used to say, is simply knowing how to hide your sources. The point of life is not to be self-sufficient. Thanks to everyone who has contributed. I also imagine this to be a work in progress. Maybe I’ll have a “Five and Dime Manifesto” when sixty rolls around.

The Double Nickel Manifesto.

Laugh a lot.
Walk a lot.
Look for every way you can to let people know you love them.
Try new things.

Practice old things.
Be honest and truthful.
Don’t hang on to anger.
Learn about the world and inform your compassion.
Be kind because everyone is fighting a great battle.
Don’t get too comfortable.
Remember life and faith are both team sports.
Make change normal.
Fail gloriously and often.
Don’t let fear get the last word.
Talk about what hurts.
Look for ways to connect.
Live like there are no discards.
Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.
Fall in love with a Schnauzer.
Marry out of your league.
Make music.
Be a regular somewhere.
Write it down.
Be thankful.
Make a memory out of every meal.
Don’t eat alone.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: in tune with the land

When we moved into our house last summer, we moved into a home where the house had been fixed up (it was built in 1926), but the yard was – well – a trash heap, in the back at least. The front yard was mostly weeds, some prettier than others. Because we wanted Ginger’s dad to be able to enjoy the backyard, since we could secure it, we put our energy there, building a fence and a deck (thanks to our friend, Cameron) and, with the help and expertise of the folks at Bountiful Backyards, we turned the trash heap into an edible, beautiful landscape. This week, which has been my spring break from school, it was time to do something about the front. Ginger and I bought some plants, were given many more by Mary Anne, our generous neighbor, and I went to work.

I started this morning by digging a hole for a camellia and I kept hitting bricks. After about the sixth one (yes, I catch on quick) I realized I was hitting more than some random refuse. Rather than digging down, I started scraping the top layer off of what turned out to be a brick walkway that ran across half the yard. The bricks were in good condition and lined up beautifully. In the nearly ninety year history of our house, it has spent little time unoccupied. Granted, our neighborhood has been what is called euphemistically “transitional,” but people have been in the house. I had to wonder how people could forget a brick walkway. At the same time, I knew how people forget sidewalks and even cities. I remembered a passage from Annie Dillard’s wonderful book, For the Time Being.

New York City’s street level rises every century. The rate at which the dirt buries us varies. The Mexico City in which Cortes walked is now thirty feet underground. It would be farther underground except Mexico City itself has started sinking. Digging a subway line, workers found a temple. Debris lifts land an average of 4.7 feet per century. King Herod the Great rebuilt the Second Temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago; the famous Western Wall is a top layer of old retaining wall neat the peak of Mount Moriah. From the present bottom of the Western Wall to bedrock is sixty feet.

Quick: Why aren’t you dusting? On every continent, we sweep floors and wipe tabletops not only to shine the place but to forestall burial. (123)

I planted azalea bushes that are about eighteen inches tall, a Japanese maple seedling that after three years has almost grown two feet, a hydrangea that isn’t much taller. Our neighbor to the right has one azalea that almost covers the whole front of her porch. She has no idea how old it is because it preceded her. Whoever planted them is long gone. Spending my day digging and planting was an exercise in mortality, in all that is temporal. I was not doing eternal work. I was planting living things whose days, like mine, are numbered. And, somehow, I was enlivened by the process. After seven hours of hard work, I came in energized as much by the process as whatever I might have accomplished.

About the time I bought Annie Dillard’s book, I also heard Dave Mallet sing. I used to volunteer to run sound at Club Passim in Cambridge MA and he was one of the performers I worked with. He had a number of very cool songs, but the one he is perhaps most remembered for is called “The Garden Song,” or as it is often referred, “Inch by Inch, Row by Row.” One of the verses says:

Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land

The last two lines describe how I felt digging around today: in tune with the land, with the eternity that lives in passing moments and daily gestures of mortality, with the hope I find in planting something I will not see full grown, with the connections in the conversations with passing neighbors, with the holy that lives in hard work. I have spent the day in the dirt, the very stuff we are made of, planting things that will bloom and die.

I am ready for resurrection.

Peace,
Milton

on vocation and vacation

I turned down a job last week.

I was surprised, actually. The position was Chef and Kitchen Manager for a local shelter that serves about 650 people a day. I would have had a chance for my careers as minister, chef, and teacher to integrate in a way I have not experienced. I even went for a “cooking interview,” which was quite an experience and a wonderful day. I wrote about it this way in a note to some friends who were praying with me as I went through the interview process:

. . . and it was like being on a cooking show. I arrived at 6 am to find they had pulled some thin-cut bone-in pork chops out of the freezer (a donation from a Muslim charity who had received the pork and could not use it). I found a #10 can of orange marmalade, a big jar of spicy brown mustard, and about ten regular sized cans of cranberry sauce and decided we would grill the chops (there's a grill in the kitchen) and then finish them in the oven with the sauce. I found about 40 cans of baked beans and also got about 62 cups of uncooked white rice to which I added four #10 cans of Ro-tel tomatoes and some broccoli I found in the walk-in. (Did I mention they said to cook for 200?).

My first volunteer was an old man who could not speak, only growl (Errrgghhh) and I had him open the beans which, when I turned my back to check on the grill, he dumped in the pork sauce. So I fished them out. The big square skillet where we were cooking the rice didn't come on correctly at first and, about an hour and a half before lunch I found out they had only thawed 100 pork chops and we needed twice that many.

The folks working with me were awesome. We all put our heads down and lunch was ready when it needed to be. They told me the first wave would go out and tell the others what was for lunch and how well they liked the meal would determine how big a crowd we would have overall.

We served 230.

They called the next afternoon and offered me the job. When they began talking details, there was a limited amount of vacation time. I countered telling them now much I liked the job and how I knew I needed more time off, but they were confined by the policy of their board and I turned them down.

I’ve never done that before.

Growing up in a minister’s house, and spending some years in ministry myself (the UCC considers me “retired”), I was in my thirties before I learned to differentiate between what I do and who I am. I didn’t learn it in church. I was working at Blockbuster video in Charlestown, Massachusetts to try and help pay the bills while Ginger and I tried to plant a church there. I walked up to a woman who had been looking at the rows of video boxes for some time and asked if I could help her find something.

“Oh,” she said rather startled, “I don’t usually talk to the help in places like this.”

Her insensitivity turned into a chance for me to see myself in a new light. I worked at Blockbuster. I wasn’t the guy who rented videos. That was what I did. Still, in all three of my more lengthy vocational experiences – as minister, chef, and teacher – there’s no way around inhabiting the job in some sense. I’ve never felt like I left those things at the office, if you will, the way I could walk away from the video store at night. Yet, even though I am a minister and a chef and a teacher, I am more than those things. And I need more out of my life than work.

When Lent arrives, I will mark two years that I have been off of my antidepressants. Things are better for reasons I both can and cannot explain. I have learned some things about how to ride the monster a bit differently so that it doesn’t get the best of me. I also know some of the things that trigger the gathering storm. Staying at work all the time is one of them. But that lingering fear is not the main reason for walking away from the job.

I asked for what I needed to stay healthy and live a somewhat balanced life – and to have some quality time with Ginger – and they couldn’t offer that. So, staring down all the faces that came through the food line, I took care of myself. I felt good about it, I felt sad about it, and I felt a little guilty as well.

I’m comfortable with the first two emotions, but I’ve stared the last one down. I was a good fit for that job, but I am not the only person in the world, or even in Durham, that can do that job well. One of the passages by Frederick Buechner I have carried with me for years comes from Wishful Thinking:

Vocation” comes from the Latin vocare (to call) and means the work a [person] is called to by God.

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self interest.

The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you find your work rewarding, you have presumably met requirement (a), but if your work does not benefit others, the chances are you have missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work does benefit others, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you are unhappy with it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your customers much either.

… The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

I read those words both differently and more knowingly after last week. I am a minister, a chef, and a teacher, but this was not the place for me to be those things. It was not an easy decision, and I did what I could to find the intersection and didn’t find it there. So I said, “No.”

All I can do now is trust God and my decision.

Peace,
Milton

what to expect

The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me. That's how it would always be from that day forward. Of course, that's the way it had been all along. I just didn't know it until that morning. Surprise upon surprise: some good, some evil, most somewhere in between. And always without my consent.

Carlos Eire -- Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
from The Writer’s Almanac on January 3, 2010

what to expect

I would love to tell you life is made
to order -- a sunny afternoon can be
summoned like a strawberry daiquiri
little darling the ice is slowly melting
here comes the sun I say it’s alright
you can always get what you want

one morning the phone will ring
and shatter your slumber into shards
one evening you will turn down
your street and not recognize
the place you call your home
though there is nowhere else to go

and then on some other morning
you will rise much earlier than usual
ahead of the sun so that it rises
as you drive into it turning the clouds
into sky-fires of hope and promise
and always without your consent

Peace,
Milton

things have not gone as I planned

what were intended to be days
have become weeks – six, in fact
and these last few days of my summer

find me trying to finish the deck
instead of other august projects
and, of course, I never intended

to catch and cut my finger on
the protruding nail, or sweat
through four (count ‘em) t-shirts

one day, cooler and far away
from now, I will be sitting under
an october sun with a cool drink

and warm friends and will say
“I helped build it” in response to
an affirming comment without

remembering being hot and hurt
and reach for my guitar without
a thought for the cut on my finger

Peace,
Milton

traveling music

This post finds me in Birmingham packing up my in-laws to come and live with us in Durham. Though I am quite experienced at losing cities, Ginger and her folks have deep roots here in Birmingham, so this week will be as full of grief as it is possibilities.

Last week, I was camp pastor for Wilshire Baptist's Youth Camp and had an amazing week full of all the joy and wonder that comes with getting to go to camp. I took a couple of new songs away with me from the week, thanks to Darren Dement, the youth minister, and Mumford and Sons, the band who sang the tunes. The first one, "Awake My Soul," was one we sang together in worship; the second, "Roll Away Your Stone," was one Darren played for me. I offer some of my favorite lyrical highlights under each video.



in these bodies we will live
in these bodies we will die
where you invest your love
you invest your life



it seems that all my bridges have been burned
but you say, 'that's exactly how this grace thing works’
it's not the long walk home that will change this heart
but the welcome I receive with every start

Thanks to all of you who continue to be carriers of grace.

Peace,
Milton

a quick note from the week

It seems this blog has become unintentionally sporadic. I have things I want to say that I have not had time to put on paper; I also have thoughts and feelings I need to sort out a bit before they are loosed on the world. In the greater scope of things, the challenges of these days for our family are not unusual or unique. We are stuck in the middle of life with everyone else. That said, I thought I would share one of the songs getting me through these days: Bill Mallonee's "Bank."



Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: off ramp

In the shadow of the chapel steeple
we’ve simmered and sautéed all evening,
following the familiar patterns we know,
trying a few new things, marking time by
making dinners, passing plates, and,
finally, taking out the trash.

This morning, time was moved along
by turning pages, the clicking of keyboards,
and restroom requests; the tools of the
trade are stored in backpacks and we
made our day without thinking of
how long to braise the lamb.

A twenty-mile asphalt artery took me
from one world to the other, time travel
in a matter of minutes, punctuated by
a uniform change and a cup of coffee.
Neither knows much of the other;
I am a sliver in this Venn diagram.

My flight on the freeway puts me past
eighteen exits, or so, each one an off ramp
to another layer of life, another place
just like the kitchen and the classroom
where someone is telling time and
inhabiting the world they know.

It makes me want to exit early, stop
and ask, “What’s cooking?”

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: in the soup

Today I worked on a project that was off the menu, if you will, along with the other prep I had to do to get ready for dinner. One of the organizations in Durham that works hard to figure out how to feed and house folks who, for whatever reason, are hungry and homeless is Urban Ministries. One of their big fundraising events is called Empty Bowls. (The concept is a national one you can learn about here.) The way it works is potters here in town make clay soup bowls, restaurants make and donate soup, and people come and pay for a bowl and soup ($30) or just soup ($15) to help support UMD.

The Durham restaurant is one of the restaurants involved and I am the one who gets to make the soup. This will be my second year doing that; the new part for me is I get to go to the event and serve the soup this year. And yes, there is a friendly competition among the soup providers. (Durham folks: come eat and vote.) Here’s their promotional video.



Now, I’m not just making soup; I’m making twenty-five gallons of soup, which means I have no recipe that large. Let me back up. I don’t actually have a recipe, period, other than this is a soup I have made before and love: Sweet Potato, Apple, and Poblano Bisque. The largest batch I’ve made to this point was about three gallons. In many ways, soup is a forgiving thing to make because it is not an exact science in the way baking is, for instance, but in both cases, expanding the recipe means working to figure out the ratios: the ingredients have to be seen in relationship to one another. A salad dressing, for example, hangs on the ratio between the vinegar or acid and the oil. For my soup, the relationship between the sweet potatoes, apples, and poblanos has to be in ratios that let you taste the ingredients in that order and in that priority: you need to know it is a sweet potato soup, with a touch of apple in the middle, and a nice peppery finish at the end. The garlic and ginger are there to fill in the background, if you will. My recipe ended up something like this:

60 quarts of peeled and sliced sweet potatoes and the water they are soaking in
16 quarts of onions
16 quarts of Granny Smith apples
8 quarts of poblano peppers
4 cups of garlic
4 cups of fresh ginger
enough vegetable stock to get the soup to the consistency needed
salt and pepper

We don’t have pots big enough to do all of that in one, so I divided it into fours (because I had two big pots) and made half of it today and will do the other half tomorrow. Then I’m going to mix the batches in the containers (five 5 gallon containers) so the soup will be consistent from batch to batch because I want the soup to taste the same to the first people who come to eat on Friday night as it does to the last people. And it will.

My brother called me this afternoon in the middle of my souping and I tried to explain what I was doing, much as I have tried to do here. He is the pastor of a church with several thousand members; our church has about a hundred and fifty active folks. I listen to what he has to do and feel about his job the same way he felt about how I was spending my day. I love being in a small church where I know the three year olds and the eighty three year olds, where worship has both focus and informality, and where there is a certain hand made quality to the whole experience. I have no idea how to think about going to church with eight or ten thousand other people. I imagine understanding the commonalties means learning to understand the ratios and how you expand the recipe for what it means to be a community of faith. I’m sure making more soup is easier to do.

The word ratio has relate in its roots, which is to say figuring out ratios has to do with figuring out relationships and priorities. In the same way I want the taste of the sweet potato to come first, and then the apple, and then the pepper, so I have to keep tweaking the recipe of my life so that my relationship with Ginger is the strongest note and let the other aspects of my life begin to find their place in relation to what matters most to me. As one who is capable of becoming quite task-focused in any given situation, I have to keep reminding myself that the ratio between people and stuff that needs to get done, people should always be on the heavy end of the equation. The analogy works on an individual level, as I struggle trying to figure out how to exercise and lose some weight in a personal world that has all but written both out of the equation.

On a couple of the recipe sites I have found, they have a function that allows you to change the number of servings and they will recalculate the amount of the ingredients. When the new recipe comes up, so does a disclaimer saying expanding a recipe is not as easy as proportionally increasing the ingredients. Sometimes you have to add more of something, or less of something else, to get it to taste and feel and look the way you know it’s supposed to look. Life may be about ratios, but it’s more than just doing the math. If I were someone who understood the nuances of mathematics, I would probably say life is more complex than just following the recipe.

I do wish, sometimes, life was as easy as soup.

Peace,
Milton

rainy day

take the umbrella,
she said
but I was not going
to be
gone for long and I
don’t mind
getting a little wet
I dry
off rather quickly

the rain lasted most
all day
a background of soft
applause
to a thoughtful day
and I
must say I concur

there aren’t many days
like this
when hope clings to me
like rain
and love runs freely
like rain
in a storm of thanks

Peace,
Milton

it's my job

In the middle of the afternoon, as I was cooking for a friend and Ginger was sermonizing, as she calls it, she started reading MLK quotes to me, ending with this one, which she introduced by saying, “Here’s one I didn’t know.”

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Beyond its newness to us, the quote stood out because it made us both think of her father, Reuben. If there is anyone on the planet who took pride in the job he did, day in and day out, it was Reuben. He is the incarnation of the words from Jesus’ parable, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Reuben was first a milkman and then later a deliveryman for Golden Flake potato chips. Both the angels and the checkers smiled when he walked into a store.

I thought about King’s words later in the evening at the celebration of Rev. J. C. Cheek, who has pastored Mt. Calvary United Church of Christ here in Durham for forty years. The ballroom at the local Hilton was filled with friends and parishioners, full of laughter and stories about this man who has poured his life into his city and his church. One of his childhood friends turned to him and said, “Thanks for letting me say these things now, rather than at your funeral.” What a gift, indeed, for both men.

Last Sunday night, I caught the end of the Golden Globes when I got home from work. The festivities kick off what some in the entertainment industry call “Awards Season” (summer, autumn, winter, awards, spring), as the weeks ahead are filled with a bunch of different congratulatory celebrations, including the Grammys and ending with the Oscars. I like watching for the moments when someone is caught genuinely by surprise by the recognition, and a year doesn’t pass that I think about how fortunate they are to have chosen a career where awards are part of the package. Most people on the planet go unsung, regardless of how well they do their jobs.

One of the things I learned when Ginger read the quote was Mac McAnally must have read King, because the quote is an obvious inspiration for Mac’s song, “It’s My Job,” which Jimmy Buffet made famous. The first verse says,

in the middle of late last night
I was sitting on a curb
I didn’t know what about
but I was feeling quite disturbed
a street sweeper came whistling by
he was bouncing every step
it was strange how good he felt
so I asked him why he swept and he said
it’s my job to be cleaning up this mess
and that’s enough reason to go for me
it’s my jog to be better than the rest
and that makes the day for me

If you walk into the Dunkin’ Donuts in Charlestown, Massachusetts on any work day morning, the express line forms to the right. These are regular customers only getting coffee. Behind the counter, there is a Lebanese man who has been at the shop since it opened. Next to him is a woman at the cash register. The man knows his customers so well that the only words spoken are ones of greeting and gratitude. He simply looks about two people back in the line, smiles, makes their coffee they way he knows they like it, and then hands it to his coworker at the register. It’s his job.

At the Durham Ritz Car Wash on 15-501, you might think the small army of guys armed with towels would just give your car a quick once over before waving for you to drive away. Instead, you should plan on standing there a good ten minutes after your car has ridden through the automated wash as they hand dry the vehicle, clean all the windows, and even spray the tires clean. It’s their job.

On any given night he is working, my coworker Abel is out to make cooking history. He watches every detail, preps his station beyond expectations, and watches out for those around him and what they might need. If the night is slow, you will find him in the walk-in, cleaning and straightening things for the folks who will come in the following morning. When he gets ready to plate an order, he moves efficiently and intentionally, making sure his food is the best it can be. Every shift. It’s his job.

I wish the Golden Globes had categories for all of them. I hope those around them are extravagant with affirmation of their excellence. I pray for a spirit that doesn’t depend on affirmation to motivate me to offer my best work. I offer this poem by Marge Piercy, who does excellent work of her own and also knew of what King spoke.

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Amen. I think I will ask Jimmy Buffett to sing our closing hymn.



Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- There's a new recipe.

hands of kindness

I wish I knew how it all began. Maybe it was the cold snap last weekend, but then again, maybe not. Something happened, though, and all I was left with was a perfectly viable Internet connection and a MacBook that couldn’t find it. Ginger’s laptop could, but not mine. I let it sit for Friday and Saturday, because I was working, tried to see what I could figure out on Sunday; by Monday I was doing my impersonation of Blanche DuBois: forced to rely on the kindness of strangers by calling Apple tech support.

The guy was personable and engaging, even as he informed me that my computer was past its service contract, which meant I would need to pay for help, and then he said, “But let me take a few minutes to see if I can help.” Forty-five minutes later, I knew more about what it wasn’t, but could do little more than say goodnight and go to bed. Today, I decided to call again. A woman answered this time, informed me of my lapsed contract, and then said, “But let me see if I can help.” She gave me a good half hour of her time, finally passing me on to the Wireless Dept. of Apple Help, and to one more person who also told me I would need to pay for a service contract and then said, “But let me see if I can help.” He took me through some screens and maneuvers previously unknown to me and finally said the problem was with my DSL modem, which meant I needed to call Verizon. I was so far in already, I decided to keep going. I learned, first, that Verizon had a specific Mac department, so I got to make a second call and talked to yet another nice tech support person who had a whole new set of exercises for me to try. Just when it appeared I had flummoxed my fourth techie, he asked if he could “share my screen” and soon he was moving things around on my computer while I sat and watched. One of the windows he opened was one I had looked at with everyone I talked to. He stopped and asked if a small box at the bottom of the screen was checked. (I would give you more specifics, but I’m scared to open that window again for fear of changing something.) I told him it was, and he said, “That’s the problem. That box should not be checked. It’s often the problem, but it is such an insignificant thing that we often forget to look at it.”

And, with the click of a mouse, my problem was solved. OK, three hours later and a click of the mouse, but, hey, I’m back in business thanks to four very patient and personable people whom I met because I needed help.

And they helped me.

My morning began with my joining the story of Miep Gies already in progress on NPR’s Morning Edition. Gies is the person who hid Anne Frank and her family; the story was marking her death on January 11; at 100, she was the last of the Dutch citizens who hid the Franks from the Germans. I was struck, in particular, by this section of the story.

MIEP GIES: I, myself, I'm just a very common person. I simply had no choice. I could foresee many, many sleepless nights and a life filled with regret if I would have refused to help the Franks. And this was not the kind of life I was looking for at all.

TERI SCHULTZ (NPR Correspondent): Gies explained another motivation for emphasizing her modesty. She said if people are allowed to think it takes remarkable qualities to act boldly on behalf of others, few will attempt it.

Ms. GIES: People should never think that you have to be a very special person to help those who need you.

I suppose the truth in her words applies whether or not one’s life is on the line. I don’t mean to think of the kindness I received to carry the same weight as what Miep Gies did for Anne and her family, but I do think it’s the same motion. The difference is in degree, not substance. We were built to be kind, to be helpers, if we are willing to exercise those muscles.

On the same Friday night my Mac lost its way, Ginger and I spent some time at her favorite sermon incubator, the Starbucks on Guess Road. I didn’t yet know of my dilemma because I took only a book – one of my Christmas presents – Ed Dobson’s The Year of Living like Jesus. Dobson is a retired pastor who has ALS and decided to spend a year trying to live – eat, worship, act, speak, be – like Jesus as much as possible. As you can imagine, it was not an easy year. What struck me as much as anything was the way his search for Jesus pried open his heart to experience life with more compassion. We left the coffee shop in what was becoming a bitterly cold evening (even by Boston standards) and were talking as we drove home. Then Ginger said, “Maybe we should give the person at the bus stop a ride.”

I hadn’t seen a person or a bus stop, but I made a u-turn on what was an empty street, and we drove the two or three blocks back to where she was. Ginger rolled down the window and asked her if she wanted a ride. “Yes Ma’am,” she said, and got in the car. She was in her twenties, I figured out from what she told us of her story, and was on her way to see a friend. Durham is not that big a city, so we were only eight or ten minutes from her destination. We dropped her off and worked our way back home, wondering out loud why we didn’t pay more attention to lonely souls standing at bus stops. I was grateful we stopped; I was even more grateful for Ginger’s eyes. We may not have to be special people, you see, but we do have to look for one another.

Bob Bennett wrote a song many years ago on his Small Graces CD that I keep coming back to, and I thought of it again tonight. The chorus says, simply:

there’s a hand of kindness holding me
theres a hand of kindness holding me
holding on to me

I have learned (again) that kindness is not an abstraction; it is hands-on stuff. And we are the hands.

Peace,
Milton

a few small repairs

I'm sorry I've been silent for a few days. The problem is with my MacBook, not me. For some reason, I can't get on the Internet here at the house, which makes it hard to post. I'm writing now from Ginger's computer that doesn't appear to share my Mac's reticence to engage. I will be back soon.

Peace,

Milton

dinner music

I was reading Donald Miller’s blog – Part 2 of a great duo of posts on “Living a Memorable Life,” this one on making memorable scenes – and I was particularly struck by his discussion of the power of a detail: change a the power of a scene by changing the setting. Sometimes a seemingly small detail can alter the whole experience.

Ginger and I have owned three homes, and in each one the kitchen has played a central role. Well, let me rephrase that. In our two homes in Massachusetts, the kitchen was the central room to our story in many ways. Because of my work schedule in Durham, dinnertime has not been what we are accustomed to. Actually, for the most part, dinnertime has not been, and we both miss it severely and are determined it will not always be so. We like each other too much to not share our meals, and we like the home it creates and the people that gather around our table. But, because of life as it is right now, the kitchen in our home has not found its place, if you will, in our story. And then Ginger and her mother changed one detail: they gave me an under the cabinet CD player/radio for the room. Both our kitchens before had music, and I have missed it.

The unit was sold out over Christmas and was delivered today. Needless to say, I installed it today and then went scrounging through my CDs for some music to cook and eat by, since Duke has not resumed classes and I had the night off. I got to cook dinner for the two of us – and to sing along as I did. There’s hope for this little kitchen all because of one detail: we are going to create some memorable scenes here as well, I can feel it.

Tonight, I offer a music sampler of some of the soundtrack of our evening, hoping they help to tune your heart towards memory making.

First, Jackson Browne singing “These Days.”



Mary Chapin-Carpenter: “Why Walk When You Can Fly”



I love this guy’s voice: Ray Montagne’s “Trouble”



A dip back into the Eighties: Lone Justice singing “Shelter”



I’ll let Jackson close things out: “For a Dancer”



On this day of the Feast of Epiphany, I’ll close with a quote from Twelfth Night (which was last night): “If music be the food of love, play on.”

Indeed.

Peace,
Milton