lenten journal: sunday sonnet #21

The lectionary passage today was Matthew's account of Jesus being tempted in the desert. In Reading Jesus, Mary Gordon talks about Jesus' experience in the desert demonstrating how he was growing into who he was becoming, which stuck with me.

sunday sonnet #21

He had been forty days without food
when the Tempter showed up for the test;
this “messiah” was no match for shrewd --
he could cause him to crumble when pressed.

It didn’t end with the quest in the queries --
The temptations were not “three and done.”
Of integrity, Jesus could not grow weary
If Messiah was who he would become.

Jesus growing into his mission –
that’s the picture here painted in sand;
his strength calls to our own volition
to be true in each moment at hand.

Who we are is so easy to lose –
Everyday comes the call to re-choose.

Peace,
Milton

life is a poem

The last three weeks have been a bit of a blur for me. The restaurant at Duke reopened with the new semester and there were still things to do at the Durham restaurant beyond my usual responsibilities, leaving me with one day off in the last twenty or so days until today. Things have gone well. Business is better at Duke than it was this time last year, our staff is working well, and I’m feeling good about the way things are going – and I am going non stop. In the meantime, my writing has been more private than usual, consisting mostly of my doing my best to stick with my Morning Pages; far too many nights I have chosen to sleep rather than post here, which is not an easy choice because it leaves me feeling lopsided and out of balance.

Mary Oliver says, “Writing a poem is making and keeping appointments between the heart and the learned skills of the conscious mind.”

By that definition, life is poetry: it’s all about keeping those same appointments between head and heart, between being and doing, and stepping into the traffic of the intersection where all those things meet to see how we might keep things flowing, rather than ending up in gridlock.

I’m aware these days, in my aching feet and tired bones, of the unity of our created beings, the oneness of body, mind, and spirit that give our words physicality and turn our actions into language. How I am able to think and feel and write is never separated from my body, even when I try to disconnect them. Oliver, again:

Language is rich and malleable. It is a living, vibrant, material, and every part of a poem works with every other part – the content, the pace, the diction, the rhythm, the tone – as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it.

Ginger and I took Ella, our youngest Schnauzer, out for a walk this afternoon. Actually, I should say I joined the two of them on their regular outing since I was not at work. Walking has been a connecting activity for us over the years. There’s something about talking about thoughts and feelings as your feet pound the pavement that is both literally and figuratively grounding. We were talking about some of the choices we are making these days and how they are making us feel more responsible. She used the word first and it brought back something I have either heard or read (the source now lost in the file cabinets of my mind) about the way that word breaks down: response + ability – the ability to respond. The dictionary says the seven hundred year old roots of respond lie in answer, reply, and promise.

To live responsibly, then, we might say is living in a way that lets me keep my promises. When I let life get lopsided, I lose sight of the way in which, like poetry, every part of life works with every other part and I am not able to respond appropriately, by which I mean to answer life as an integrated being who has a sense of what is at stake in the slightest of encounters.

After our walk, we dropped Ella back at the house and took ourselves to dinner at Chubby’s Tacos, to use up the remnants of a gift certificate. The woman who appeared to be the manager, based on all the stuff she was trying to do during a very busy dinner rush, was task-oriented and terse, as I have experienced her on our other visits to the restaurant. She was not rude or unprofessional, but she seemed to be wearing her best relational Teflon so nothing would stick to her for long. The restaurant is small and our table was right next to the cash register. The manager was taking orders and we could see a large tattoo of a large dog on her calf. The woman stepped away from the register to do something else and Ginger asked if that was her dog.

“Yes,” she said. “We have four of them at our house.” The next thing I knew, the nonstick coating had fallen away and the woman came over to our table with some pictures she had pulled out from under the counter to show us photographs of her dogs, all of which had been rescued in one way or another. Ginger’s question had given the woman room to respond, to keep the promises we make to be human to one another, even as Ginger had kept hers by asking in the first place.

“The goal,” says Mary Oliver, “is to write memorably.”

Another +able words: able, in this case, to be remembered. The call, in this poem we call life, is to live memorably, responsibly – to keep our promises by fleshing out the details in such a way that the content, pace, diction, rhythm, and tone make more of our days than a recitation of what is wrong or what we wish would happen, and offer a slice of the story that belongs to and connects all of us.

When my life gets lopsided, I lose sight of my ability to respond, to answer, to play my part in the call and response of our existence and too easily convince myself that I am a solitary poet, composing a life that is mostly about me. The rhythm of life too quickly sounds more like metronome than melody and my words monosyllabic. When I choose to keep my promise to respond to the God who breathed me into existence, to Ginger who loves me unfailingly, to my singing Cuban dishwasher, to my tail-wagging Schnauzers, to those I pass in the traffic of life, I begin to remember I have one small part in a far larger work of poetic genius that calls me to be responsible, to keep my promises, and to live memorably.

Peace,
Milton

comedy is empathy

Ginger and I agree on most things in life, but one of the places where we differ is our disparate opinions of The Office. She can’t stand it and it cracks me up. I’m late to the show, actually, catching up these days with through cable reruns and well aware that the original British version is probably even funnier. I thought about the show today because I heard part of an NPR interview with Ricky Gervais, the creator of both series and the star of the British version. I stepped out between two catering gigs to grab a cup of coffee and a shot of thoughtfulness thrown in for free.

Gervais has just finished a US stand up tour and was promoting an HBO special that is coming up. In the part of the interview I got to hear, he was talking a bit more philosophically about what comedy means and where it comes from. I’m fortunate that npr.org has a transcript of the part of the interview that I heard:

"America is my mecca for entertainment. Everything I have ever loved has come out of America," Gervais says. Those comics "taught me that you have to be at the bottom rung of the ladder. No one wants to see unfeasibly handsome, clever people doing things brilliantly; they want to see a putz struggling and falling over, and the important thing is getting back up again."

Gervais insists there is no place for a peacock in comedy. He says it's all about being the everyman and maintaining a fallible persona that people can relate to. "There should be no machismo in a comedian because comedy is about empathy," he says. "I think the audience doesn't need to be told that your life is better than theirs."

In Out of England, Gervais comes onstage with a king's crown and a rock star's pomp, accompanied by fireworks and Queen's "One World, One Vision." His ostentatious entrance is a tongue-in-cheek jab at production values and the idea of celebrity.

"Soon you find out that all my anecdotes of fame are about me being the underdog, me being embarrassed socially, depressed, everyone getting the better of me," he says.

Gervais says returning to stand-up has allowed him to discover the importance of physical comedy. He realized "what people liked was me acting out a scenario as opposed to just telling jokes," he says. "Because comedy is empathy, most of the things we identify with are probably nonverbal. Body language and the way that you feel things are are more important than what you hear."

Comedy is empathy. He said it twice. Comedy is empathy.

One of my favorite movies is an offbeat little comedy that was one of Luke and Owen Wilson’s first films: Bottle Rocket. The tag line to the movie was, They’re not really criminals, but everybody’s got to have a dream.” Owen plays Dignan, a lovable goof who thinks his seventy-five year plan to criminal success is the key to life. Luke plays his friend Andrew who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Dignan sees his plan as salvation for them both and begins to put together a team. In the scene below, he’s interviewing Bob for the position of getaway driver.



“That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.” Empathy.

In another one of my favorite movies, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) says to one of his students, “We’re not laughing at you; we’re laughing near you.” Comedy is empathy.

Empathy is identifying with the feelings and actions of someone else so much, as one dictionary put it, that when the batter swings the bat your muscles tense. It is identification, connectedness. The comic is not saying, “You’re like me,” but rather, “This is what it feels like to be in your skin.” Comedy is incarnational.

I loved what he said and I thought about it as I was helping to prepare dinner tonight for a roomful of people I didn’t even see. I ran through several comedians in my mind and soon realized Gervais was not describing all of the comedy there is, but what he saw as comedy at its best. He was making a bold statement in a world filled with biting and cynical satire where comedy is mostly target practice. He was offering a powerful and gentle alternative.

Though his words sent me thinking more metaphorically about comedy, particularly related to faith – Jesus as the original stand up comic – I wanted to pass along what I heard because it’s worth regarding someone who takes the time to think about what they do, about what they mean, and then moves to embody those thoughts with intentionality.

That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.

Peace,
Milton

home room

(with apologies to middle schoolers)

I’m sitting between Gustav and Hanna
in the homeroom of life, wondering how
to make sense of everything coming through
the loudspeaker, the stream of non sequiturs
that passes for news and the endless storm
of chatter that follows, each of us choosing
sides without bothering much to choose our
words. Life looks and sounds a great deal like
a middle school cafeteria. Shouldn’t speaking
our minds beg us to use our minds before we
speak? Instead, our lunch table politics build
allegiances based on fear or desperation or,
for the lucky ones, popularity, none of which
does much for real conversation: “Hello – and
I really mean that.” We worry about hurricanes,
but the small winds of breath that carry our
words are more destructive. We wear labels
like bunkers around our hearts and look only
at those who look and act like us. We learned
our vocabulary and jumped through all the
right hoops, but face it: we’re seventh graders.

Peace,
Milton

no room at the inn

Today felt more like March than May.

I drove up to the Inn about three o’clock to find The Owner and see if I couldn’t get a clearer picture of what is going on. The first person I saw was one of the other chefs I work with who was coming out of the function kitchen rather than the restaurant where he usually works. He told me he had been told I was not coming back. With that information in hand, I went inside to wait for The Owner who had gone to run an errand. When he came in, I asked for a few minutes of his time and followed him up to his office. He sat down and looked at me as though he had no idea why I was there.

Ginger and I have been rehearsing what I might say (and how I might say it – often the larger issue for me) over the last couple of days. I’m not going to recall the whole conversation because I don’t feel the need to embarrass him, but I will say I felt good about what transpired in that little room. I said what I needed to say without resorting to a personal attack or falling into a power struggle. I stood up for myself and got the money he owed me, which was not a done deal when I went in. I also got to say goodbye to the people I enjoyed working with during my eighteen months at The Inn. Then I got in the car, drove to the bank and cashed the check, and went to meet Ginger so we could go to the gym.

He never knew about the nights I drove home and talking to Ginger on the phone and telling her how much I loved my job. He never knew how much fun I had with my Brazilian buddies plating up the steaks for the functions. He never knew because he only knew me as an appliance and not a human being. At one point in our conversation today, I called him on something he had done and he snapped, “I’m the owner; I can do anything I want.”

“Actually, that’s not true,” I answered. “You can’t treat me like I don’t matter and get away with it.” Soon after that, I gave him back his key and left. I drove away both unemployed and unburdened. Whatever is next, my time with him today confirmed that it is time for me to not be there: there is no room for me at The Inn.

As I remember another story, that's not necessarily a bad thing . . . .

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: I am . . .

Since today marks the beginning of National Poetry Month, I have a statement to make: Jesus was a poet.

Why not? Vaclav Havel was a poet who became president of his country; why can’t a poet be Messiah? Jesus thrived on metaphor. His “I am” statements, as we’ve come to call them, are among his best: I am

• the bread of life
• the light of the world
• the door
• the good shepherd
• the resurrection and the life
• the way, truth, and life
• the true vine

The seven statements use everything from cooking to animal husbandry to describe who he was and why he stepped into our skins. Like a good poet, he did more provoking than explaining, offering metaphors that refused to be easily pinned down. Some have even expanded. Light, for instance, we know now is one of the few things than can be perceived as both a wave and a particle, but not at the same time. We draw light from an abundance of sources not available to Jesus’ hearers the first time around, leaving us to unpack the poetry in ways Jesus, perhaps, didn’t even think of during his time on earth.

I love the way he began each statement: I am . . .

In the extensive Bible study I did while driving from church to work this afternoon (which means I tried to remember every statement of Jesus I could), I couldn’t come up with a single instance where Jesus, when trying to communicate his person and mission, began a statement with “I am not . . .” He never described himself by reflecting – or deflecting – off of those he considered rivals or enemies. He had poetry to speak and to do, so negative, competitive, and judgmental words had no place in the equation. And he was standing in a lineage of poets.

When Moses asked God whom he should say sent him to Pharaoh, God answered, “Tell him, I AM sent you.” The verb TO BE. Isaiah talked about trees clapping their hands and the rivers singing because they grew tired of waiting for the human poets to catch on. The writer of Ecclesiastes had to be sitting in a coffee shop somewhere writing those words, with a small jazz combo (can you play jazz on lyre and timbrel?) sitting in the corner.

This weekend, the presidential candidates had to report how much money they’ve raised so far. They’ll spend a good deal of the money telling us why they aren’t like the other guys. But does that really tell us anything? The Democrats keep saying they’re not the Republicans, and the Republicans tell us they aren’t Democrats, but do those statements reveal any thing significant about who they are? The candidates who stand up and say, “This is who I am and here’s what I’m trying to do live mostly in TV dramas and rarely cross over (Fred Thompson notwithstanding).

I was in a Baptist seminary when the hostile takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention began. Those who masterminded the coup were clear about who they were. Those of us who were against them lost ground first because we could articulate little more than, “We’re not them.” How can you build any momentum and passion by yelling, “We’re not them! We’re not them!”? Many of us on the more moderate side of the Baptist continuum at the time could have articulated who we were as Baptists and who we hoped we were becoming. Instead, we got hooked into the power struggle and have the scars to prove it.

“I am,” said God.
“I am,” said Jesus.
“I am, I said,” sang Neil Diamond.
“I am what I am,” said Popeye.

Poetry might get you elected president, but it’s more likely to get you killed. Jesus was crucified because of who he said he was. Had he been willing to speak the prose of competition and power, or if he’d been willing to allow those around him to tell him who to be, he might have lived longer. But for Jesus to say, “I am the way and the truth” was about as comfortable for the power brokers of his day as running their hands down the business side of cheese grater, because his poetic self-awareness told them who they were not. They squash you like a bug for stuff like that.

One quarter into my fifty-first year and I still feel like an apprentice poet trying to learn how to say, “I am . . .” authentically and intentionally. I’m far more to used to the language of subversive comparison, the barbed phrases of ambush: I’m not you; take that. When I talk about who I am, there is no violence in my words. There is hope. There is love. There is truth.

There is poetry.

Peace,
Milton