once below a time

I know.

Every blogger in America is working on something to say as we near the anniversary of September 11, 2001. I remember that crystal blue Tuesday morning as Ginger and I drove up the Southeast Expressway from Marshfield heading into Boston for a day of appointments. I remember the gradual awareness that the sky was more empty than clear, that cars were beginning to pull over and stop along the freeway, that WBUR was bearing awful, even unbelievable news of what was happening in New York, and then D. C., and then in a field in Pennsylvania. I remember parking the car so she could go and visit a parishioner who was dying in the hospital and I could go for my doctor’s appointment, which meant we had to leave each other and then find each other again without much help from our cell phones. I remember sitting in the Chili’s in Hingham unable to eat as CNN played the loop of the planes hitting the Towers endlessly. And I remember going with Ginger that night to open up the sanctuary at North Community Church – our church in Marshfield – so people could come and sit or pray or simply be together.

The story of that day began eight days before: September 3 – Labor Day, which was the day I went into the free fall that I learned to name as Depression. The storm clouds had been gathering for some time, but I had not given them much heed. For the previous decade, Labor Day had marked my last day of summer before I returned to teaching high school English. That September I had planned to step out of the classroom, since we had moved too far away for me to continue to drive back to Winchester High School, and I was going to write as if it were my job. Instead of walking into a new chapter of my life, I crashed and found myself more broken than I knew. In the days that followed September 11, I remember seeing an image of a man falling from one of the Towers. I knew how he felt. I had never felt the kind of despair and shame and worthlessness that swallowed me that day, though I am sure I was not the first one in the world to feel it.

In his memoir, The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days, Frederick Buechner began by speaking of his childhood before his father’s suicide as “once below a time,” using a phrase he borrowed from Dylan Thomas.

“Once below a time,: he says in his poem “Fern Hill,” meaning, I assume, that, for a child, time in the sense of something to measure and keep track of, time as the great circus parade of past, present, and future, cause and effect, has scarcely started yet and means little because for a child all time is by and large now time and apparently endless. (9)

I find meaning in the phrase by taking it quite out of the context of both men because it has little to do with my childhood or coming of age, but more to do with coming to terms with the covered up wounds and wrongs that had festered and darkened until they pulled me down below a time where I struggled to breathe and remember who I was. It was almost eight years before I began to feel as though I was upon a time once more. I did not find my way back as much as I was found by God’s love and grace incarnated mostly through Ginger who clung to me with sacred tenacity even though my depression cost her perhaps more deeply than it did me.

As we were getting ready for church on September 9, Ginger said, “If you can, I think you should ask for prayer this morning.” When the time came to share our joys and concerns, as we like to say, I raised my hand and did my best to say I needed prayer because I was depressed in ways I had never been. After the service, one person came up and said, “I know how you feel. I feel that way, too. I just didn’t know we could talk about it out loud.” What I learned that day I have relearned many days since: my pain, however deep and profound to me, is not unique. There is a reservoir of grief, despair, and loneliness that connects us all. When I think it is about me, all I can see is the endless darkness that falls below time. When I understand I am a part of a spectrum of pain and joy, both unspeakable, I have the chance to stumble into grace.

In the days that followed September 11, we all hung our flags on our fences and porches and found solidarity for a few weeks that has eluded since, for the most part. Much of the world offered resonating words. One French newspaper carried the headline, “Nous Sommes Américains” – we are all Americans. Yet, our solidarity soon focused our fears in a way that made us quick to tell the rest of the world they were not us, nor were we interested in being them. Our grief and pain were not things they could understand. To those in Rwanda and Uganda and Congo, to those who had survived Hitler’s death camps, to those whose cities had been bombed in Germany and Vietnam, to those who had lived through despicable regimes in Chile and Cambodia, we have not sought resonance but too often have made it seem as though we feel our pain has somehow superseded them all.

Ten years on, we have let our fear get the best of us and it has torn us to pieces.

In 1994, when the Towers still stood, David Wilcox wrote a song called “Show the Way” that I wish were our national anthem (and, yes, I know I have quoted them before):

you say you see no hope
you say you see no reason we should dream
that the world would ever change
you're saying love is foolish to believe
'cause there'll always be some crazy
with an army or a knife
to wake you from your day dream
put the fear back in your life

look, if someone wrote a play
just to glorify what's stronger than hate
would they not arrange the stage
to look as if the hero came too late
he's almost in defeat –
it's looking like the evil side will win
so on the edge of every seat
from the moment that the whole thing begins

it's love who mixed the mortar
and it's love who stacked these stones
and it's love who made the stage here
although it looks like we're alone
in this scene set in shadows
like the night is here to stay
there is evil cast around us
but it's love that wrote the play
for in this darkness love can show the way

so now the stage is set
don’t you feel you own heart beating in your chest
this life's not over yet
so we get up on our feet and do our best
we play against the fear
we play against the reasons not to try
we're playing for the tears
burning in the happy angel's eyes

it is love who makes the mortar
and it's love who stacked these stones
and it's love who made the stage here
although it looks like we're alone
in this scene set in shadows
as if night is here to stay
there is evil cast around us
but it's love that wrote the play
for in this lifetime love can show the way

He’s right. It’s not over yet. After all, it’s only been ten years.



Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: blessed are those . . .

I spent the better part of the morning with some friends from church as a part of a Lenten Bible study. We are focusing on the Beatitudes. As I was preparing to lead the group, I was struck by the fact that Matthew takes just four chapters to move from Jesus’ genealogy to his birth to his baptism to the temptations to calling the disciples and then spends the next three chapters on one sermon. I’ve been reading through a couple of commentaries that talk about understanding the blessings of the beatitudes as Big Picture: an eschatological perspective of the realm of God, which is both now and not yet. I thought about the commentator’s word when I sat down this afternoon with Stephen Dunn again and his essay on “Poets, Poetry, and Spirituality.”

The classic spiritual journey is from travail to understanding to acceptance. (168)

That classic journey is the one on which I was raised. As the old gospel song says,

farther along we’ll know more about it
farther along we’ll understand why
cheer up my brother live in the sunshine
we’ll understand it all by and by

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for,” the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews proclaimed, “the evidence of things not seen.” Yes and I have come to see that life is more nuanced and more complicated that the stepping stones in the classic journey. Dunn offers another thought:

Spirituality in poetry. Here’s another attempt at a definition: A journey from travail toward an understanding that leads back to mystery.” (170)

Though Dunn is not writing from a Christian perspective, he informs mine because he asks good questions. I have found that I need the questions of those who are not insiders to my faith perspective to challenge me to see more than I can find on my own or within my community of insiders, particularly when it comes to dealing with pain and struggle. Take, for example, Tom Waits’ song, “Georgia Lee”:

cold was the night, hard was the ground
they found her in a small grove of trees
lonesome was the place where Georgia was found
she's too young to be out on the street.

why wasn't God watching?
why wasn't God listening?
why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee?

When I was in the deepest part of my depression and trying to figure out what was happening to me and how to begin to make meaning of it, most Christian writers were not much help because they had a hard time coming to terms with despair without offering how I let Jesus fix me. I didn’t need someone to fix me. I needed someone to listen, to resonate, to sit there in the dark with me and admit it was real and that I could survive. Dunn, again:

I know that despair often can be a ticket to an unchosen journey, and to survive it is to come back with glimpses of what was not available to us before. (160)

As Lent began this year, I observed – no, I celebrated two years that I have been off of my antidepressants. Life is lighter these last two years than the eight years before them and I am grateful. I worked hard to understand what depression was and how I could deal with the darkness and I don’t understand how or why it let up on me in many ways. I live now with the prospect that this is a season of relief, which may last a long time and which may not, and I must continue to let my faith and my life be informed by what I saw and felt and learned while riding the monster. I see what Dunn means by catching glimpses of “what was not available to us before,” just as I have a deeper appreciation for the prepositional phrases that complete each of the Beatitudes:

blessed are the poor in spirit FOR theirs is the kingdom of heaven
blessed are they that mourn FOR they shall be comforted
blessed are the meek FOR they shall inherit the earth
blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness FOR they shall be filled
blessed are the merciful FOR they shall receive mercy
blessed are the pure in heart FOR they shall see God
blessed are the peacemakers FOR they shall be called the children of God
blessed are those persecuted for righteousness FOR theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Jesus’ words feel like an invitation to the journey Dunn described: “from travail to toward an understanding that leads back to mystery.” To begin to grasp the blessing means to be first acquainted with grief, with loss, with suffering. To begin to understand the substance of things hoped for is to find resonance first with the pain that is the substance of human existence. Such is the paradox of blessing, the opening to the deeper mystery of God.

After eight years of depression, I know experientially more about emotional pain than I did before. I also know that love did not let go of me. I didn’t learn that because someone told me to trust Jesus or told me that love wouldn’t let go of me. I learned it because people who love me – Ginger being at the top of that list – didn’t let go. They didn’t try to fix me or correct me; what they did best was not leave. They incarnated love in a way that gave me room to trust that I would be comforted, that God was somewhere in the dark as well. As REM sings in one of my favorite hymns,

when your day is night alone
and you feel like letting go
when you think you’ve had too much of this life, well hang on
‘cause everybody hurts
take comfort in your friends
everybody hurts
don’t throw up your hands
don’t throw up your hands
if you feel like you’re alone
no, no, no – you’re not alone

Despair is the seedbed of hope. Hope is more profound than explanation or reprieve. Love never lets go.

Someday we shall see face to face.

Peace,
Milton

treading lightly

For days in a row, now, the sun
has shone brightly on me, making
me begin to believe it is summer:
a season of light. I finished two
two projects in the house yesterday;
today I painted a room that has been
waiting for weeks to be a different
color, and tended to my garden,
watering the small green tomatoes
that hold such promise. I even
made a soup from left overs in the
fridge. I feel awake, aware, and even
useful, and I find it hard not to wait
for the other foot to fall – the foot
that stomps daylight into darkness
and kicks me into free fall, into the
days of unpainted rooms, undone
projects, and unplanted gardens.
“How do you feel?” the doctor asked.
“Like myself,” I answered. Why, then,
do I let myself believe the lie that is
my depression, the lie that says it can
permanently change the weather
of my heart when I know it will
come (and go) like the Dixie storms
that punctuate my Carolina afternoons;
the dark thunder clouds are real and
they are temporary; the sun, however
comes up every morning -- it’s true.

Peace,
Milton

I have decided

I don’t think I’ve gone a week without posting since I started this blog.

This week I’ve felt tired. Exhausted. As I’ve commented to several folks, I’ve been running out of me before I run out of day. I have a couple of good ideas of things I want to write about – that aren’t about depression – and I can’t find the energy to give birth to them. This has been one of the few times in dealing with my depression that sleep has not offered some respite. I’m sleeping restlessly and not sleeping long enough. I’m not sure there is a long enough.

Besides being physically exhausted, I’m tired of being depressed. I’m tried of writing about depression. I can only imagine many are tired of reading about it. (Actually, I know some are because they have found kind ways to let me know.) I understand. It’s not that my days are all bad, in fact, the opposite is true. I’ve had some great times this week. Dear friends have been to see us; work is good. But somewhere late in the day, I feel like the cartoon character that runs off the cliff before he realizes there is no longer any ground beneath him and then he goes into free fall, except I just start falling asleep. I have nothing left.

Ginger pushed hard to get me to write tonight because she knows the defeat I feel when I stare at a blank page for an hour or so and then close the computer without making a mark. Something about having found a couple of hundred words tonight does help and I hate that all I seem to have to say is, “I’m depressed.” There’s more to me. There’s more to life. I can see it. I just can’t write it somehow.

Somewhere in the course of my day – I think it was reading something about Zimbabwe – I wondered out loud to myself, “I’m not sure God is in the business of relieving pain. Making meaning out of it, yes. But taking it away is not necessarily part of the deal.” Many years ago, I heard (or read) Mike Yaconelli talk about a sermon he preached on suffering and God. He said he closed the sermon by reading a passage from John Claypool’s Tracks of a Fellow Struggler in which Claypool describes his eleven-year-old daughter, whose body was wracked with cancer, crying out to her dad to ask God to take away the pain. He said he prayed as earnestly as he knew how. When he finished, his daughter asked why God hadn’t taken the pain away. Yaconelli said he looked up from the book and said, “That is the God we are called to serve. Amen.”

God is not going to take away my pain. I don’t expect my days will always be this dark and exhausting, or Ginger’s so difficult as she stays with me. I have hope that I will find some treatment that will help me manage my depression more effectively, and I don’t think it is going to disappear because I keep telling God I’m tired of this. Therefore, I have to decide what it means for my life that I live with depression. I have to decide whether my faith or my illness gets the last word. I have to decide to trust those who say they love me mean they love me even if all I can write about is my depression. I have to decide I’m going to fight with all I have to offer Ginger more than the dregs of my existence. I have to decide to accept that living life means playing hurt.

And I have to decide everyday, over and over.

The counter at the bottom of the page says I’ve written 632 words: this is me deciding.

Peace,
Milton

love's gonna carry me home

The past few days have been marked by the words and actions of people around me who have offered love and encouragement in a number of tangible and meaningful ways. I'm still not past needing a melody to get through a post, but tonight I offer one out of gratitude: Pierce Pettis' "Love's Gonna Carry Me Home."

these days I’m noticing things
the snow and the rain
the wind in the trees
when it gets moving
they seem to say
that I’m not alone
and someday
love’s gonna carry me home

these days I’m learning to smile
the hand of the child
has pulled me into fields of laughter
they make sure that I know
that someday
love’s gonna carry me home

amazing grace big surprise
hits you right between the eyes
hits you hard like a small flat stone
slays the giant and leads you home

these days my life is a song
it’s not very long and so I’ll sing it that much louder
don’t take it hard when I go
it’s ok – love’s gonna carry me home
it’s ok – love’s gonna carry me home

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- Cooking helps, too. There's another new recipe here.

prayer in open d

I spent the day on a men’s retreat with some guys from church. We were out at a lake house. The day was beautiful, the conversations were honest and open, and the day was full of meaning. I came home filled up and still ran out of gas before dark. The days feel too long and the nights too short. I sleep, but I don’t rest. I find, in days like these, that I turn to two things that offer me hope: cooking and music. I made dinner for Ginger. The meal was simple, yet it helped me to cook and then sit at our kitchen table with her.

I sat down to write and could do little more than listen. I leaned into an old friend, Emmylou Harris, and her “Prayer in Open D.”

There's a valley of sorrow in my soul
Where every night I hear the thunder roll
Like the sound of a distant gun
Over all the damage I have done
And the shadows filling up this land
Are the ones I built with my own hand
There is no comfort from the cold
Of this valley of sorrow in my soul

There's a river of darkness in my blood
And through every vein I feel the flood
I can find no bridge for me to cross
No way to bring back what is lost
Into the night it soon will sweep
Down where all my grievances I keep
But it won't wash away the years
Or one single hard and bitter tear

And the rock of ages I have known
Is a weariness down in the bone
I use to ride it like a rolling stone
Now just carry it alone

There's a highway risin' from my dreams
Deep in the heart I know it gleams
For I have seen it stretching wide
Clear across to the other side
Beyond the river and the flood
And the valley where for so long I've stood
With the rock of ages in my bones
Someday I know it will lead me home

With the rock of ages in my bones, I’m going to lay down my head and my burden tonight.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. There’s a new recipe here.

how did you find me here?

I can remember the day in 1989 that I bought the CD.

I was in Sound Warehouse and picked up How Did You Find Me Here? by David Wilcox the same afternoon I bought Steady On by Shawn Colvin. It was one of my better music buying afternoons. Ginger and I moved to Boston the following summer and both Colvin and Wilcox played outdoor concerts in Copley Square. When we went to see David, I carried a copy of Any Starlight Night, Billy Crockett’s newest CD at the time (on which I co-wrote some of the songs) because I wanted to make a connection. I was early and David was behind the stage working on his guitar. I walked up and thanked him for his record and gave him my offering and went on my way. I don’t think I even told him my name.

Over the years, we saw him perform several times, most of them outdoors, as I look back now: in the Charlestown Navy Yard, at Harborlights, and one inside gig at the Berklee Performance Center. We bought his CDs and sent copies to friends because we knew the vulnerability and intimacy in his songs would resonate with their situations. Tonight, we found him again. David came to Durham and we went with our new friends Lori and Terry to sit and listen on the lawn of the American Tobacco Campus.

Ginger and I went early because we were used to Boston days where free concerts meant get there early to get a good seat – or a seat at all. We parked the car and walked past an Airstream trailer hitched to an SUV and there was David Wilcox leaning over his guitar case. Since then, he and Billy have gotten to know each other and David performed at Blue Rock, Billy’s artist ranch and studio. I walked up and said, “You don’t know me but we share a mutual friend in Billy Crockett.”

“He’s a good man,” David said. Then he asked if we would be willing to help him carry some CDs and DVDs to the stage area. We listened to a marvelous evening of music. After the concert – a good while after the show – he was still standing around talking and we walked up to thank him for the evening. I also got to tell him I thought his song, “Show the Way” should be our national anthem. I also got to tell him how the song has been a touchstone and a life line for me during my depression. Ginger and I stood and talked to him for about ten minutes, I guess. As we got ready to leave, he hugged me and we went on our way.

I never did tell him my name.

These past couple of weeks I have struggled against the gathering storm. My depression, it seems, is working hard to suck me in. As usual, Ginger gets hit hardest because the bottom drops out when I get to the end of the day and stop moving. I think it’s harder to live with a depressed person than it is to be the depressed person. Yet, on a night when we were only two of several hundred people sitting on the lawn under the Lucky Strike tower listening to David and two of any number of folks who wanted to talk to him, he found me with his words and music and helped me stave off the darkness, at least for tonight. He doesn’t know who I am, other than the guy who knows Billy and who got choked up when he talked about “Show the Way.” He’ll remember talking to Ginger, I’m sure, long after he’s forgotten talking to me. Still, almost twenty years after that afternoon at Sound Warehouse, it’s my turn to ask, “How did you find me here?”

And to say thank you.

Now, please rise for our national anthem.

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You're saying love is foolish to believe
'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an Army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What's stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late, he's almost in defeat
It's looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is....

Love that mixed the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote this play...
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set. You feel your own heart beating
In your chest. This life's not over yet.
So we get up on our feet and do our best. We play against the Fear.
We play against the reasons not to try
We're playing for the tears burning in the happy angel's eyes
For its....

Love that mixed the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote this play...
For in this darkness love can show the way

Peace,
Milton

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

darkness on the edge of town

Thanks to the folks at DirecTV, we have XM Radio in our house. Thanks to XM Radio, we have a channel called “The Village” that is all acoustic singer-songwriters. I play it when Ginger isn’t home, just as she listens to the disco station when she is alone in her car. When she came in from her meetings the other night, she left it playing while she got settled; I was writing. When she came back into the room, I had moved to the living room and was sitting on the couch. When she asked what I was doing, I answered, “Listening.”

The song was “My Father’s House” by Bruce Springsteen from his Nebraska album, which ought to make most anyone’s top ten list. The whole record is achingly sparse and beautiful. The song says,

Last night I dreamed that I was a child
out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home
through the forest before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees
and ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snappin' at my heels

I broke through the trees, and there in the night
My father's house stood shining hard and bright
the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed, and to that house I did ride from out on the road,
I could see its windows shining in light

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch
a woman I didn't recognize came
and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story, and who I'd come for
She said "I'm sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore"

My father's house shines hard and bright
it stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

After the song was over, Ginger came back into the room and said, “You want to know why you’re depressed? You listen to depressing music.”

We both laughed.

The evening came back to mind when I got to work this morning and one of the chefs (who also lives with depression) chose Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town as our morning prep music. I told him the same story I told you and we laughed again, then we moved on to talking about what the singer and the songs have meant to us over the years. Somewhere after we stopped talking and I was kneading the dough that would become the English muffins (our homemade hamburger buns), Bruce started singing “Promised Land.”

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I'm just killing time
Working all day in my daddy's garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge

The dogs on Main Street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land

I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on Main Street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land

There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

The dogs on Main Street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land
I believe in a promised land...

For a guy from New Jersey, Bruce has spent his fair share of time in the dark and in the desert – at least in his songs. He’s always taking to the road, with despair driving and hope in the sidecar, the two inseparable traveling companions somehow, moving between the wounds of all that has been left unfinished and unatoned and the wonder of the cleansing storm that wipes things clean. We’re all on the same road between houses that hold the hurts that don’t heal, the places that have been vacated or abandoned, and the mansions that are being made for us, fueled by both hope and despair.

And I’m sure when we get to the Promised Land there will be no disco.



Peace,
Milton

note to self

In the quiver of lies called depression,
the name of the sharpest arrow is
You Have Nothing To Say. Forget
what the flowers told you, or the gift
from the little one in front of you at
the drive through when she smiled.

How can you give voice to the joy of
a snuggling Schnauzer, or speak to
the grief that rises with the sun day
after day? Anything you say will only
reinforce your insignificance. No one is
waiting to hear from you. Stay silent.

Truth is not silent. You must speak
through the pain, of the pain. Silence
can’t hold healing. Name the lie. Write
into the night, fill any page with names
you can remember, stories you believe,
songs you know by heart. It matters.



Peace,
Milton

traveling with sisters

The restaurant where I work is a little over three months old, which means those who have been there since the beginning are worn out. The food service world already has a built in what-have-you-cone-for-me-lately component: you can’t put the food on the table and say, “Gee, I really wish you had been here yesterday” and expect to stay open for long. Layer on to that the seemingly unending little changes and corrections that need to be made to help the business find its rhythm and everyone is doing more than a full time job.

This week, people started dropping like flies. Three of our cooks have been out sick; two or three others are running on fumes. The good news for me was I worked double shifts most of the week, which is good for two reasons: one, I made more money and two, I got to spend a lot more time in my Depression Free Zone. Part of the reason for the illnesses has been the Durham weather, which can’t seem to make up its mind between winter and spring. But I think most of the weariness comes from another source. January and February are traditionally slow months in the food world. Though we want the business so we can stay open, everyone was looking for a respite this week so we could catch our breath and it didn’t come. We had the busiest week in the restaurant’s brief history and we were short staffed.

Life, like orders in a restaurant, just keeps coming. As Roseanne Rosanadana used to say, “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

As I was driving home from my shift Friday night when I called my brother to catch up a bit. He filled me in on his week and I told him about mine, mentioning how dark the days had seemed. He then said something I knew and yet needed someone else to say so I could hear it: “You know, Milton, I’ll bet a lot of what you’re feeling is because of the move. Every time we’ve moved it’s taken me six to nine months to sort through things. You lived in Massachusetts for seventeen years. You’re grieving. It’s going to take some time.”

On Sunday, Ginger (who says a lot of things I need to hear) quoted Nancy Sehested (who shares our Baptist roots and is now in Asheville) in her sermon:

In our Epiphany journey, we go with two sisters. One is Rachel, her eyes still weeping and looking backwards. The other is Mary, arms filled with the fragile promise of new life, looking ahead. Our journey must be made slowly because neither Sister Grief nor Sister Promise can walk too quickly.

I went to church thinking I was waiting for the Wise Men to come to town, only to learn I’m traveling with Two Sisters, one an incarnation of inconsolable grief and the other of intractable hope. How one journeys with them feels a bit like trying to ride Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmepullyu at first, but the more I’ve thought about Miller’s and Nancy’s and Ginger’s words, the more I come to see the creative and faithful tension in traveling with people vested in looking both forward and back.

My blogging pal and nearby neighbor Jimmy told me about his daughter’s interest in genetics and he talked about how scientists are learning there may be the possibility of turning off “switches” in particular genes that could prevent disease, like my depression. I’ve pondered that option for some time now and come to the paradoxical conclusion that I’m not sure I would want to flip that switch. When I think of the pain I’ve inflicted because of my depression, particularly on Ginger, I wonder if flipping that switch might not be a good idea. And I also have questions. How do I know where the depression ends and I begin? Would I be the person I am had I not lived through days like these? Is the point of life to avoid pain and suffering or to make meaning of them?

The questions aren’t any easier than living day to day, holding past and promise in the present tense (tension?), as voiced in this quote from Chase Peeples (also from Ginger’s sermon):

The example of the Magi begs the questions, what do we see when we look in the darkness? And what could we see if we allowed our eyes to adjust to the light available to us?

Annie Dillard wrote (in which book I don’t remember), “If you want to see the stars, you have to go sit in the dark.” It’s less about flipping switches than it is adjusting to the light and being mindful of the sisters who flank us on each side, calling us to slow down, reflect, and persevere daily, faithfully, and intentionally. Mary pulls us to remember there is life beyond grief and Rachel reminds us we are all walking wounded. Healing comes in traveling together.

There’s an old gospel hymn, “God Leads His Dear Children Along,” that has always spoken to me. I found the story behind the hymn today and now it means more.

The author of this hymn, George Young, was a carpenter and a pastor. He didn’t make much money in either profession. Most of his life was spent in small farming communities. Finally, however, he and his wife were able to build their own home, and they moved in. Shortly afterwards, while the Youngs were holding meetings in another small town, someone set fire to their house and it was reduced to ashes. It was probably out of that experience that George Young wrote this hymn.

Here are the lyrics:

In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet,
God leads His dear children along;
Where the water's cool flow bathes the weary one's feet,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright,
God leads His dear children along;
Sometimes in the valley, in darkest of night,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Though sorrows befall us and evils oppose,
God leads His dear children along;
Through grace we can conquer, defeat all our foes,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

I’m tired this week because I chose to work double shifts when I was asked and because I’m living with a depression I didn’t choose. I’m traveling with Two Sisters who were walking long before I took to the road and they are telling stories of how God holds us all, in grief and in joy, in past and in promise, in darkness and in light. Life will never be fixed by the flipping of a switch; neither will it be stopped: it just keeps coming.

Sisters -- and brothers -- come, let us keep walking together.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- Here is an excellent article on the roots of the violence in Kenya.

days like these

there are days when it's hard to put one word
in front of the other and push a page past blank.
there are nights when what looks like tired is
more. there are afternoons spent preparing for
evening meals for people I never see and I have
energy to cook the steak to order and reduce
the sauce to a perfect consistency, hanging on
to the meat even as it pools on the plate. I want
that stuff to follow me home, but it trails off
like air out of a balloon and, by the time I bring
what’s left of my day to her and she asks how
I am, all I can say is, “OK” unconvincingly. Being
with her is the best part of my day, yet I know it
costs her deeply to be here with me. still, she stays.
that’s true everyday, thank God.

Peace,
Milton

not alone

On Christmas Eve, I was driving home from finishing my shopping when Ginger called to tell me to expect to see a man in our front yard raking leaves. We had lots of leaves. Tim had knocked on our door asking for work so he could have Christmas with his daughter. When I got home, I took him a bottle of water and wrote down his phone number for future reference. He was doing a great job. He’s been unemployed for two months and thought yard work might be a way to get back on his feet. He had a gentle manner and a sweet spirit. When I came back in, Ginger said, “Once he showed up it felt like Christmas.”

A couple of hours later, I was in Harris Teeter (one of our local supermarkets) with Jay getting groceries for Christmas dinner. As I came to the end of the row, a man in a wheelchair turned to enter. We both stopped. I motioned for him to go ahead and he said, “Please, you first.” When I got even with him, I realized it was Reynolds Price, an author who has meant a great deal to me over the years, in particular for his books Three Gospels and A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined. He smiled and I said, “Dr. Price?” He nodded and I continued, “My name is Milton Brash – actually that doesn’t matter. What I want to say is you have befriended me for many years through your books and I’m grateful.” He thanked me and we both went on our ways.

Today I worked the lunch shift at the restaurant. Evan is one of the guys I work with. He is the Sous Chef, and another quiet and gentle guy. In small conversations over the past couple of weeks, I’ve learned he as a philosophy degree from college and couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do, so he started cooking, which he’s been doing for a decade. He’s often a man of few words, but as we were doing prep work today, he asked me how I started cooking in restaurants. I gave him the short version (or as short as I can tell it) of how I fell into a clinical depression after my treatment for sleep apnea unmasked it and how, after doing my best to just get out of bed and get through the day for about eighteen months, Ginger helped me get out of the house since I needed to make some money. I started driving around the South Shore of Massachusetts, looking for something I wanted to do. I got a part-time summer job as security at the South Shore Music Circus, which meant I got to hear good music for free, and I talked my way into a cooking job at a small restaurant that was just opening.

I could see the resonance in his eyes when I mentioned I lived with depression. I could also see the connection when I said I had found the kitchen to be a depression free zone. However deep the gathering gloom, the light shines in the kitchen and the darkness can’t extinguish it. We talked about the theories we have of why it’s true: the very tactile, hands on work; the pace and busy-ness; the concentration required; the sense of accomplishment and the fairly immediate gratification in seeing your meal go out to those who came to eat; the sense of community that grows out of working together to make the place function well.

A month ago, I’d never met these guys. (OK, I did go to a Reynolds Price book signing in Boston years ago, but I’d never met him in his natural habitat.) I know them now because I entered their world, not they mine – they were here first. I’m new to this orbit. Here’s how life gets colored in: through chance meetings, incidental contact, meaningful coincidence. And in some cases, souls stick to one another – even in small ways – and we create something that wasn’t there before. I can see the seedlings of friendship taking root in my conversations with Evan. I feel compelled to keep in contact with Tim. I find it interesting, therefore, that I thought it wasn’t important to tell Reynolds Price my name. I was aiming to bounce off of him like a billiard ball, I guess; I wasn’t trying to be friends. I didn’t want to impose.

Friendships thrive on imposition, however, and give birth to good and unexpected things. In the summer of 2005, I met an old friend, Nancy, at the UCC Synod in Atlanta. The meeting was a surprise to us both since we had both been Baptists the last time we were around each other: she had been my pastor in Dallas. We found time to catch up and I learned she was a UCC pastor in Charlotte (at the home church of the associate pastor of our church here in Durham). She learned about my depression and my cooking and my trying to figure out a way to write. She responded by telling me about our friend Gordon’s blog, Real Live Preacher. I had never heard of a blog and I hadn’t talked to Gordon in a long time (our connections go way back as well), so I called to impose and learn. Thanks to his friendship and patience, don’t eat alone was born two years ago today.

The blog has fed me much like the time I spend cooking because I’m writing regularly, I’m working on my writing, and I’m doing it in the context of community. Whether you are a commenter or not, that you are reading is another inextinguishable light in my darkness. My aim has been to write about one thousand words a day (except when I write poetry) and to write at least 250 posts a year, which means I’ve stacked up almost a half a million words in the past two years, writing at first in the cracks of my life and then learning how to carve out time and keep my promises to myself. In the incidental contact that comes through these web pages, I’ve seen some friendship seedlings take root as well, nourishing me in ways I had not expected.

My depression has beaten me like a rented mule this past week. I’m hopeful it’s a seasonal thing rather than another long ride on the monster. However deep the darkness, I don’t eat alone and I don’t write alone: I am not alone.

I am not alone.

I know that tonight. I’m going to have to impose on you to keep reminding me.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: can we go caroling?

I didn’t grow up observing Advent, only Christmas. Even then the time was short: I have a December birthday, so my mother made a point not to put up the decorations until after my birth had been duly celebrated; my father liked the decorations to come down the day after Christmas, so the whole thing lasted about two weeks at our house. Short and sweet. As far as church went, no Advent observance meant December was the Christmas season, every service filled with carols as we worked our way to the manger.

My first real experience with Advent was through Episcopal friends when I was living in Fort Worth. One was the youth minister at the nearest Episcopal church and the other was one of the young people in my youth group who was from an Episcopal family. I remember going to the midnight service on Christmas Eve at All Saints Episcopal Church, with all the smells and bells, and being seated on the aisle at the exact point where the young man with the big ball of incense took it full circle and gave me a snoot full of scented smoke. I sneezed and cried the rest of the service. I’ve been an Advent fan ever since.

I love the intentional preparation, the meaningful repetition of the rituals, the lighting of the candles, all of it. And I sorely miss the Christmas carols. I know we get to sing them during Christmastide as we wait for the wise men to finally make it across the desert, but I miss singing them now, while we are waiting. I miss them because those songs are a good bit of what helps me to prepare, rather than just wait, and I feel like we’re unwittingly giving over the Christmas music to the malls and radio stations since we aren’t singing them in worship. I need someone other than Karen Carpenter to get me to Christmas.

greeting cards have all been sent
the Christmas rush is through
I just have one wish to make
a special one for you . . .

One of the things we have not done yet in our new place is put up a tree. We, like Mary and Joseph, I suppose, are in transition. We are renting a house here waiting for someone to buy or rent our house back in Marshfield so we can find our way to more permanent housing after the first of the year. We’ve worked hard to only unpack the basic things we need since we are going to have to repack it all in the Pod to move it to wherever it goes next. When we were filling it up in Massachusetts, we worked hard to pack in an order that would let us get to our most necessary things and our Christmas decorations were some of those essentials. When we got home from church this afternoon, I said to Ginger, “I’m going to find a tree. I can’t go any longer without a tree.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I can’t either.

Neither of us last long, sinus wise, in a house with a real tree, so I headed for the various big box stores around us to find an artificial one since we gave the our old one to the Marshfield Church before we left. I really haven’t been in stores much this season (I’m an online shopper) and was quite startled by the crowds and parking difficulties on a Sunday afternoon. I finally found our tree (pre-lit!) and assembled it in the living room in front of the window so our neighbors could see we were into the swing of the season. The lights have a built in twinkle to them and they warm up the house quite nicely. The will burn from now until the Magi arrive.

As I went about my Christmas tasks, I kept thinking about carols. As I put up the tree, I opened iTunes to see what Christmas music I had since the Christmas CDs are still in the Pod somewhere. The only full album I had was Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas. Just before the end of the record, he started to sing my favorite:

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

I know one of the reasons I find such meaning in the carol is the images of darkness juxtaposed with hope have been deeply resonant as I have learned to live with depression. The song speaks, for me, to what I want to happen in and to my heart during Advent.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

I did learn there is a verse that is omitted from most hymnals that would be worth singing this year. at least.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

One verse, in particular, touches me the most.

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

How can we wait to sing these words? How can we keep from singing? We know the song we all need to hear.

For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-encircling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

I can wait for Christmas, but I need to sing now. Can’t we start caroling?

Peace,
Milton
P. S. – I couldn’t find Cockburn’s version to share, but here is a beautiful offering by Catie Curtis.

open window

This poem is a response to two prompts: one from Christine with this accompanying image and the other being the final prompt at Poetry Thursday, which was “open window.” They reminded me of jazz artist Chet Baker, whose story I first learned of through David Wilcox’s song, “Chet Baker’s Unsung Swan Song.”

open window

The smell of the sea wafts in
through our open windows,
curtains billowing like full
sails of a tall ship riding
waves of adventure.

From upstairs, I can see
the small whitecaps landing
on the sand with gentle
introductions; it’s hard not
to feel free on such a day.

They found Chet underneath
his upstairs window early
one Amsterdam morning.
Despite all the melodies,
he thought he needed

a needle to be free.
When I hear his horn
I wonder why he couldn’t
find wings in the music
that carries my heart

out beyond my burdens.
Perhaps it felt different
on the other side of the horn.
Some places breezes can’t blow
no matter how open the window.



Peace,
Milton

working my way home

I sat down to write tonight and began by first by checking in at Pandora, which is a really cool music site that lets you set up your own “radio station” where you designate the artists you want to hear and then they surprise you with some others based on your music genome. I’ve created several stations, but the one I clicked tonight was “Boys with Guitars” and the first song up was one by Paul Simon off of his album Surprise. As I was collecting my thoughts and feelings, I heard him sing,

I figure that once upon a time I was an ocean
But now I'm a mountain range
Something unstoppable set into motion
Nothing is different, but every thing's changed

I spent my day caught, or maybe pulled, between who I was and who I am. This morning I met with my friend Ann who is in seminary (and also wife of Doug of Red Sox jinx fame) and taking a class on Missions. She asked to interview me for a paper on missionary kids, or MKs for short. She had done a good amount of reading and research getting ready for our time together and the quality of her questions helped me not only to remember things but to feel them as well. We talked about all the places I lived, all the schools I attended, what I remember about moving all the time, what it was like when we came back to the States on leave. I talked so much we ran out of time before she ran out of questions; we’re getting together to finish up the interview tomorrow morning. When I left her house to walk back up to the church for the closing session of Avalanche Ranch, I realized I was all stirred up.

This is the fourth summer I have been the song (and dance) leader for VBC. Many of the kids who have come have been there all four years. They have lived in the same house on the same street in the same little seaside town all that time. I was twelve years old before I knew people like that even existed. We were on leave and living in Fort Worth and I was going to Hubbard Heights Elementary School. I came home from my first day and said to my mother, “I met the weirdest kid today. He’s lived in the same house his entire life.”

“There was a kid like that in my class, too,” my younger brother said; “in fact, there were several of them.”

“I hate to tell you boys,” my mother said, “but I’m afraid we’re the weird ones.”

At least I was twelve before I had to learn that particular piece of reality. I went on to talk with Ann about how home -- as a place -- is not something I know. (For those of you who have read this blog for awhile, I know this is a recurring theme; here’s hoping it’s not also repetitive.) There’s not an address anywhere I can drive or fly or walk to and say, “I’m home.” The house from which I write tonight is home because of Ginger and the pups, but when we move one day it will slide off somehow like every other place I’ve ever lived. I told Ann I used to think it was because I had never lived anywhere long enough to grow roots, but after spending all but three months of my married life in Massachusetts I think perhaps I don’t have roots to grow. What I know of home is in faces, not places.

I look at the careers that have found me and the one I have chosen and I’ve spent most of my life both searching for and working to create home. Last Sunday, as folks took Communion, I sang,

come home, come home
ye who are weary, come home
earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling
calling, o sinner, come home

That’s what I want church to be: home, which is why the administrative side of pastoring exhausted me. When I taught high school English, I wanted my classroom to feel like that as well, which is why having to give grades ate me alive. I know that’s why I choose to be a chef because cooking makes me feel at home and makes me feel like I can help to create home for others.

Tonight was my first night at the new restaurant. The people are really nice and the other folks in the kitchen were both helpful and friendly. The place is set up and maintained well and everyone seemed to work with a sense of collegiality and intentionality. The only thing that made it difficult for me (other than everything being new) was Chef had called me back after saying I was going to be Sous Chef to say the owner had decided to delay opening for lunch until September, so what I thought was going to be a full-time position is going to be a part-time line cook for awhile. I had planned to dive in and be at work again and I’m going to be prepping and learning and standing on the sidelines for at least a couple of weeks instead.

I don’t get to feel at home just yet.

I’m sad because I got my hopes up. I’m grateful because I have a good job in a good place with good people. I also feel good because he had to do some work to make room for me, which makes me feel like he wants me there. And it’s hard being the new kid in a room where everyone already knows each other. As many times as I’ve been that kid, I can’t say it has ever gotten easier.

When Ginger got home tonight after a meeting, I had dinner ready for her and then we took the pups on a walk to the water. I tried to start unpacking much of what has made it to this page as our Schnauzers dragged us around the block under a starlight sky, anxious to get back home to the couch and the cookies. I suppose my life today feels as different from what I knew growing up as an ocean from a mountain range. In some sense, nothing is different -- if home is a place, I’m never going to find it – and, Paul Simon is right: everything has changed; I’m at home tonight because I’m with her.

Peace,
Milton

stacking up stones

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is Joshua telling the people to stack up twelve stones from the Jordan River for an altar after they had crossed through the river on dry ground.

And then he told the People of Israel, "In the days to come, when your children ask, 'What are these stones doing here?' tell your children this: 'Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry ground.'" (The Message)

What speaks most to that story is the idea of marking a place to come back to as a way of remembering, as the old adage goes, who we are and whose we are. Bob Bennett sang about what I'm talking about in a great song called "Altar in the Field":

I'll build an altar in the field
Where I'll remember

Understanding stacks of stones mean different things to different people as they find them along the way, I want to stack up a few of my own. Today marks my 401st post since I began my blog on December 27, 2005. I started writing about "food, faith, family, and friends" as a way to help me learn how to live with my depression and to connect beyond myself, both of which are inextricably tied together in my life. Stacking up the stones right now helps me because my depression is a rising tide these days.

For many years I've said I wanted to be a writer. Until I started writing this blog, I had a hard time feeling like one. Stacking up the posts like stones helps me remember I am a writer. It's an altar to which I plan to return again and again.

Peace,
Milton

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

tonight

we walked the beach in the dark.
I feel like I’ve walked all day in light
that’s been retreating like the end
of a silent movie, shrinking to a pin spot
and then disappearing into the certain
defeat of the black screen.

Sometimes I imagine a hand reaching out
of the shrinking circle, halting the darkness.
Then a second hand, and a third break away
the sides of the circle, as though it were
a thin facade and the light floods in
like a rain-swollen river.

Most of the time, however there are no
such hands; the light disappears and
the darkness remains. I’m left standing
as we were tonight, under a moonless sky,
with only your hand to hold,the consequence
of the love you’ve chosen to give.

Just before we turned for home you said,
“Say some love words -- you’re the writer.”
I had no words. All I could do was pull you close
and hold you, the dark hanging heavy
as humidity and the shallow waves of low tide
keeping rhythm with the night,

marking time till daybreak.

Peace,
Milton

yard sailing

Since I grew up in Africa, one of the American phenomena I have struggled to understand is the Yard Sale. In Nairobi or Lusaka, the thought of selling stuff we were no longer using made no sense; we gave it away to any number of folks around us who needed it and more. We weren’t making some sort of moral choice, really. No one thought of having a yard sale. It wasn’t a part of the cultural lexicon. All these years later, I showed my Americaness (Americanity?) and dragged all kinds of stuff out into the driveway to try and convince someone else they needed it and could have it for a bargain price.

The occasion was nothing more than Ginger and I attempting to dispossess any number of items we have managed to accumulate over the years, from various Sponge Bob paraphernalia to a couple of antiques to bookshelves to kitchen utensils. Since Ginger is away, it fell to my mother-in-law and I to price our treasures and get them ready to sell. Ginger called a couple of times during the day and asked how things were going. When I told her what had sold she asked how I had priced it. In most every case she said, “You’re selling things cheap.” I realized about thirty minutes after we opened shop and the yard sailors began to dock in the driveway that my inclination was still just to give it away. I was trying to get rid of things more than I was trying to sell them.

Needless to say, the end of the day saw us a little less encumbered and not much richer.

When we first moved to Charlestown in 1990, we were newly married with very few possessions and very little money. Rosemary, the woman who helped us find our first apartment, said if you need furniture or things for your house, just drive around on Sunday night and you can find lots of stuff on the curb.

Monday was trash day.

She was right. Over the years we saw some amazing stuff on the sidewalks in our neighborhood. Curbside Stuff Swapping is a regional sport in New England. Here in Marshfield, I often see different pieces of furniture at the end of a driveway with a “Free” sign attached, only to drive by an hour or two later and find them gone. If the Yard Sailors are the ones who pay, perhaps these might be the Yard Pirates. Aaarrgh!

One of the interesting things I have learned – OK, relearned – about myself getting ready for today is, though I’m not necessarily an acquisitional person, I have a hard time letting go of things I have. It’s not so much stuff as status as it is collecting as comfort. Since home is not a geographical location for me, perhaps the trinkets and toys provide a sense of place: I belong here because my stuff’s here. There’s also something about depression that drives people to hang on to things. For all the stuff I did manage to get in the driveway, I didn’t part with any books or CDs, though both herds need to be culled. Certainly, there are a good number of both I want to keep, but, after all these years without hearing it, can I not dump my Hothouse Flowers CD (from 1988) into my computer and let that record go?

Then where do I stop: the Hooters, the Housemartins, the Rainmakers, Del Amitri, Mister Mister? And those are just the late eighties bands. (Yes, I’ve invested a lot in CDs over the years.) When I feel most fragile, it feels like the thread that unravels the whole blanket. I need the things as tangible evidence of the memory that life doesn’t always feel dark. My in-laws are here for a month or so and my father-in-law’s Alzheimer’s is slowly worsening. The present tense is no longer reliable for him. Tonight we sat around the table for thirty minutes after we finished eating telling stories from our past about different jobs we’ve had, then we talked about pets, and then we talked about crazy relatives, which is where any conversation with the Brashers always seems to land because they’ve got a collection of kin worthy of Flannery O’Connor.

His past remains trustworthy; it still recognizes him. He can go sailing on the bounding main of memory without fear of getting lost or capsizing in an unexpected storm. Tonight our sails filled with the spirit of our conversation and took him to the places he knows and is known. His eyes sparkled the way only his eyes sparkle and he laughed his big earthquake of a laugh as he traveled across time. When we got back to the present, he sat back down in the recliner and went to sleep.

Somewhere on a ski slope in the spring of ’86, I remember sliding off the chair lift and heading down the slope with some of the kids in my youth group just as Richard Page’s voice began to sing:

Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel
Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night

The whole eighties production with walls of guitars and monster drum sounds along with layers of background vocals, coupled with the spectacular spring skiing in Colorado gave me wings as I came down the mountain. And in the dark valleys that have followed, I’ve held on to those words even without the melody: Lord, have mercy.

Some of the folks who navigated our driveway today were paying about as much attention as tourists on a cruise ship. Others were sailing a specific course. A young woman stopped with her father; they were looking for stuff to furnish her college apartment. They bought a book case I stained myself, a small cabinet Ginger fell in love with one summer afternoon, a couple of lamps, and a vase or two that once held flowers I gave my wife. They paid me about forty bucks and sailed off in their pickup to make new stories with our stuff. I wish I’d had presence of mind to ask her if she needed any music.

Peace,
Milton

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

seven summers at the beach

that would be a good title
for your book about depression
she said, as if it were something
I could come home and put
into words that could one day
be pulled from the shelf

she knows I have it in me
my darkness has ebbed
and flowed like the tides
each season sometimes quiet
sometimes lashing against
the sea wall throwing stones

when we walk together
we stop at the same spot
and look out over the water
we gaze from the same place
but the view is different
every time we stop

seven summers at the beach
and I know my ebb
and flow, the gathering
storms and the quiet seas
and I have survived
like an old seafarer

one day my view will change
I will not see the sea
when I stop to find myself
she will be beside me still
that’s how I will know
where I am

and she will take my hand
and say, remember our
seven summers at the beach
oh yes, I’ll say and we
walk home together
as sure as the tides

Peace,
Milton

work and wait

Our garden is almost planted. The rain finally stopped some time last night so I got out this morning and put in the rest of the tomatoes and a few other things. Instead of annuals, I’ve filled most all of our containers and with various kinds of herbs. Here is the complete list (I think):

• three kinds of lettuce
• six kinds of tomatoes
• white eggplant
• four kinds of peppers
• rainbow Swiss chard
• Brussels sprouts
• broccoli
• fennel
• green beans
• butternut squash
• zucchini
• summer squash
• garlic
• sweet, purple, Thai, lemon, and cinnamon basil
• chocolate, orange, and lemon mint
• Greek oregano
• sweet marjoram
• arugula
• cilantro
• strawberries

Wow! That’s the first time I’ve written down an inventory of what is growing in our yard. Pretty cool. Now comes the hard part: waiting both to see what makes it to the bearing stage and to eat what we grow – as well as give a bunch of it away.

After I finished planting, I came in and showered and drove to Plymouth to file for unemployment compensation. The last time I was there was when The Owner laid me off in January. Since the players were still the same in today’s scene, the script, as it were, was still in the computer so my trip didn’t take long. When I was first substitute teaching in Boston I got laid off and had to file as well. They’ve done a lot of work on the “career centers” since then. The office in Plymouth is spacious and clean and the people behind the counter are friendly, at least by New England customer service standards. One side of the office is lined with cubicles where the folks who work there help you get in the system. The other side of the room has a few cubicles with computer terminals where you can go online to look for jobs or take a tutorial. There’s also a long table with newspapers and other employment circulars. There were a couple of folks ahead of me to see a counselor, so I browsed both the print and online versions of the classifieds to see what I could find. The guy who processed my form was nice and efficient and we finished quickly. As I was walking out, I saw the guy who processed me the last time with whom I made a pretty good connection. I stopped at his cubicle to say hello and was surprised at how much of my case he remembered. Then he said, “Hey, I looked at your blog and go back there from time to time.”

I needed that.

I took a back road home so I could stop and see if there were any other interesting vegetables or herbs at some of the small nurseries on Route 53 with a mind to ending up at the gym. I was determined to get there, even though I’m still learning to like it, because it helps with my depression. And it gives Ginger and I a chance to act out one of our favorite scenes from Designing Women when Mary Jo says she likes jogging because it releases endorphins and Suzanne says, “Endorphins – you mean like Flipper?” My body was ready for the exercise today and I got a good workout. Tomorrow is weigh in at Weight Watchers, so I will get to see another benefit from my time on the elliptical machine. (In related news, there’s a new recipe.)

What the three strands of my day have in common is both working and waiting: the now and the not yet, or (perhaps better) the what will be. I planted things that will take anywhere from five to ten weeks to produce what they were created to produce. I set things in motion in Plymouth that will give me some money coming in (starting in a couple of weeks) and create some possibilities for what comes next. I’m going to spend a lot more time watching Sports Center while I work the machine (let the machine work me?) to transform my image of myself both physically and mentally. It’s all good and it all takes time. When it comes to my depression, the same formula applies: work and wait.

Work and wait. The words remind me of William Carey’s words, “Attempt great things for God; expect great things from God.” He is one of my father’s heroes because of his persistence. Carey went to India as a missionary and was there for three years before anyone he met chose to follow Christ. I’m not sure I’m dealing in the Great Things department in my life right now, but I like the combination of verbs: attempt and expect -- work and wait.

What is true for great things, I trust, is true for small things.

Peace,
Milton