Author / Michael

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Posts by Michael

I am a husband, father, minister, and writer.
by Michael

Pictures Of Our Lives

While Dawn trades the same from time to time, if you take a picture of me at night, between 10 and 11pm, it’ll look like me going into my son’s room, picking him up while he grabs for his blanket in protest, him stretching up or out and cradling into me like I’m a substitute bed, and me carrying him to the bathroom where he’ll “go”.

It’s amazing how many times I’ve done this simple series of quiet movements, under dimmed lights, so as to both not completely disturb the boy from sleep and to keep us from having a wet, sticky mess by morning’s hello.  It’s amazing that movements like these say so much about our little family, and all the families that do something like them.

by Michael

My Hopes For You, Dr. Lallene Rector

Last week I heard about your appointment, and I was thrilled.  I wanted to write to congratulate you and to offer prayerful words as you transition to your next post.

Someone I love and trust told me that transitions can feel like walking on shifting grounds, like nothing is as familiar.  You once said in a class that it takes the brain up to three years to adjust to major life changes.

I hope that as you change roles, as you assume your next set of responsibilities, that your feet will find sure ground, that what’s under your feet will be steady grace and hope-filled promise that comes from God.

I hope that you will feel ready for your new role and that everyone around you, those you really listen to, will reflect that readiness, will encourage you for your journey, and will become supporters of you on that path.

I hope that your habits, your spiritual disciplines, will train you toward a nourishing faith so that you can sense how large God is in the face of daunting challenges and uncertain tomorrows.

I hope that all of your yesterdays with the Seminary will combine to give you real space to see a splendid future.

I hope that your work with the Board, the faculty, and the students will be more and more fruitful, increasingly powerful, and meaningful for the world, for the church, for the Chicago area, and the community of Evanston.

I hope you will be able to accomplish the goals that you and the community determines is best for you as an administrator, that the next academic dean will support the same, and that, because of all your good work, GETS will be a stronger, more focused, more invitational school for people making sense of their faith, for people making sense of God’s call upon them, and for people searching for how to put themselves into their own vocations in ministry.

I hope that you love your job and that it makes you a better woman, a better teacher, a better scholar, and a better follower of Christ.

I hope that you meet people whose lives you can still personally enhance the way you have throughout your career as a professor and therapist.

I hope that you will have fun, stay creative, lead with patience, grieve with hope, feel a sense of life, feel.

Finally, I hope these words in Philippians, from the Message translation, and words like them, will anchor and strengthen you, the GETS community, and the extended communities you serve:

I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s message, from the day you heard it right up to the present.  There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.  It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you.  My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality.

by Michael

The Way Whole Worlds Change

Experiencing and anticipating all the anniversaries of my father’s death bring me both a sense of tenderness and pain.  The tenderness is joyous, the pain striking.

It was in April that me and Mark went to church with Pop, worshiped with him for the first and only time.  We drove down for the occasion and had planned to return within 24 hours.

We saw him serving as an usher.  He was proud to stand at the door of the church, excited in his way to greet people who came to church.  He was glad we were there, too.  I remember how he dressed that morning, after a night of laughing at me because I couldn’t sleep with my brother’s loud snores.  We didn’t eat breakfast because we were planning to see our friends at the Ole Saw Mill, a tradition for our dinners when we visited on short trips.

That was the morning my dad’s decline started as far as we could see.  He fainted in church that morning, during a not-so-engaging sermon.  My cousin called the paramedics, and they took a very long time to come.  There had been an accident at the Food Lion and “all” the trucks (two of them) were occupied by the injured going to the small hospital.  We didn’t eat at Saw Mill, not with dad.  Instead, we went to the hospital, called our aunts who came from Little Rock that afternoon, and waited to hear what dad’s condition was.

When our relatives arrived, dressed in their Sunday’s best, we went to get socks and fast food for dad.  Our aunts loved us, greeted us, checked in on their brother, and released us to go eat around 5pm that afternoon.  Some time after we got back to the hospital, it was clear that we could leave, that dad was going to transfer to the hospital in Little Rock the next day, and that, looking back, everything  was different.  That was in April.  May is dad’s birth month, the day being a week away.  Now that he’s gone, I’m looking at it on the calendar like a day I don’t want to come.

It’s strange being so close, and so far, from one year ago.  The whole world can change in such a short time.

by Michael

To My Mothers In Particular

I haven’t really celebrated Mother’s Day on the Sunday everybody said I should for a few years.  Even though I’ve purchased things for my son so he could learn the habit of celebrating his mother, of praising her for her sheer wonder and generosity and life.  Sundays, because of my work, usually mean that my attention cannot be spent on my mom and my godmother.  So I appoint time to do that around the holiday.

And, in truth, I have acknowledged the day by trying to reach them and a few of the other mothers in my life, the women who have birthed something like love in me, because they have changed me, and I call or contact or think about them because I cannot forget them.  Plus, I’m one of those people who hate to do things on holidays.  I’m fond of a consistent love ethic.  If my mama doesn’t know I love her every month, there’s nothing unique about May.

Still, I’m thinking about women in general and about my mothers in particular.  Of course, my mama stands in a class that’s lonely for the esteem I give her.  As I read this week, we are all only given one.  But I’ve been blessed with many mothers:  The amazing women who have given me something, who have let me see their lives, who have taught me, and who have given of themselves until I realize what it means to be large and full and generous and kind.

So I want to write in memory of you, women and you, mothers of mine.  You know who you are.

I write to thank you…

For visiting me those six weeks after my birth, saying things to me to make me eat even though the doctors were unconvincing and for your taking me home a day or two before Christmas and making all my childhood Christmases special.

For saving me from drowning that day in the Lake and for always being a fierce protector (and more than a sister) since then.

For making me do my homework, for expecting me to accomplish, and for being gentle while I did it, all because you knew what was ahead and because you saw a splendid future.

For reading to me until I learned to love the sound of a woman’s voice more than I loved the music down in my soul, until I knew how to learn, and so that I could become a reader and lover of learning and giver of truth and knowledge.

For teaching me to get receipts when I purchased things from the corner store because young black men couldn’t assume the privilege of walking out of those doors while drinking a pop in the city of Chicago.

For cooking for me, for washing my clothes, for wiping my head with a cool clothe or picking me up when I fainted those two times before school and that one time on the kitchen floor when I was home from college.  You brought me back to life more times than I can recall; you showed me how to slow down when I moved.

For showing me how to kiss and hug and hold and stare and smile because each of those tender gestures was both an expression and an ingredient of love.

For singing to me, for letting me sing to you, and for the appreciation you created in me for doing something wonderful for God and not only for myself.

For telling me stories, yours, mine, and other peoples until I could begin to scratch at the magic of making lives out of words and images from lines that snapped.

For making it normal in my mind to be kind, normal to take care of people who had no place to live, normal to feed everybody when you had the money, and when you didn’t.

For showing me how to pray and ask God for things that I wanted and for things that other people wanted and for being a consistent, gracious instructor in the ways of Mystery.  I probably can’t give a higher compliment.

For the bad choices you made, the ones you didn’t hide from me, even if we didn’t talk about them because they made me see that as musical and seamless and spotless as you appeared when you made life happen, you were still human too.

For telling me things I really needed to hear about myself, for keeping some things I thought I needed to hear to yourself, and for giving me space—even too much at times—to get it together.

For forgiving me for not writing more in this remembrance.

by Michael

To My Mothers In Particular

I haven’t really celebrated Mother’s Day on the Sunday everybody said I should for a few years.  Even though I’ve purchased things for my son so he could learn the habit of celebrating his mother, of praising her for her sheer wonder and generosity and life.  Sundays, because of my work, usually mean that my attention cannot be spent on my mom and my godmother.  So I appoint time to do that around the holiday.

And, in truth, I have acknowledged the day by trying to reach them and a few of the other mothers in my life, the women who have birthed something like love in me, because they have changed me, and I call or contact or think about them because I cannot forget them.  Plus, I’m one of those people who hate to do things on holidays.  I’m fond of a consistent love ethic.  If my mama doesn’t know I love her every month, there’s nothing unique about May.

Still, I’m thinking about women in general and about my mothers in particular.  Of course, my mama stands in a class that’s lonely for the esteem I give her.  As I read this week, we are all only given one.  But I’ve been blessed with many mothers:  The amazing women who have given me something, who have let me see their lives, who have taught me, and who have given of themselves until I realize what it means to be large and full and generous and kind.

So I want to write in memory of you, women and you, mothers of mine.  You know who you are.

I write to thank you…

For visiting me those six weeks after my birth, saying things to me to make me eat even though the doctors were unconvincing and for your taking me home a day or two before Christmas and making all my childhood Christmases special.

For saving me from drowning that day in the Lake and for always being a fierce protector (and more than a sister) since then.

For making me do my homework, for expecting me to accomplish, and for being gentle while I did it, all because you knew what was ahead and because you saw a splendid future.

For reading to me until I learned to love the sound of a woman’s voice more than I loved the music down in my soul, until I knew how to learn, and so that I could become a reader and lover of learning and giver of truth and knowledge.

For teaching me to get receipts when I purchased things from the corner store because young black men couldn’t assume the privilege of walking out of those doors while drinking a pop in the city of Chicago.

For cooking for me, for washing my clothes, for wiping my head with a cool clothe or picking me up when I fainted those two times before school and that one time on the kitchen floor when I was home from college.  You brought me back to life more times than I can recall; you showed me how to slow down when I moved.

For showing me how to kiss and hug and hold and stare and smile because each of those tender gestures was both an expression and an ingredient of love.

For singing to me, for letting me sing to you, and for the appreciation you created in me for doing something wonderful for God and not only for myself.

For telling me stories, yours, mine, and other peoples until I could begin to scratch at the magic of making lives out of words and images from lines that snapped.

For making it normal in my mind to be kind, normal to take care of people who had no place to live, normal to feed everybody when you had the money, and when you didn’t.

For showing me how to pray and ask God for things that I wanted and for things that other people wanted and for being a consistent, gracious instructor in the ways of Mystery.  I probably can’t give a higher compliment.

For the bad choices you made, the ones you didn’t hide from me, even if we didn’t talk about them because they made me see that as musical and seamless and spotless as you appeared when you made life happen, you were still human too.

For telling me things I really needed to hear about myself, for keeping some things I thought I needed to hear to yourself, and for giving me space—even too much at times—to get it together.

For forgiving me for not writing more in this remembrance.

by Michael

Your Way

The way you’ve started asking if I’ve slept well—if I “Sleep good, daddy?”—even while my eyes are red, as I slump through the bathroom hardly awake and hardly verbal;

The way you ask, at the oddest times, if I’m happy, if your mother is happy, with that song in your voice that regardless of our feelings turn us to joy;

The way you roll your eyes as you grin and ask for something by not asking for it but saying something about it, and when we don’t cooperate, you actually ask for it;

The way you say “No, not today” when asked if you’d like to take a phone call from some relative;

The way you jump up and down and say, “Cookieeeees” in the aisle at Trader Joes until the store worker joins and says that he feels exactly that way too;

The way you introduce yourself to people on the street, like a little politician, and how a few of them have peeled off a dollar or a quarter the way they did when I was boy;

The way you knock your guitar as you play it at home or at church, becoming a maestro, and building the world around you by making something beautiful;

These ways are yours, and they are, like you, a great gift to me and your mother.

by Michael

Spiritual & Writing Advice

A lot of what I do in my ministry job (and in teaching too) is the slow work of deconstructing things people have spent years building.  People, myself included, spend time and energy and themselves creating notions and living from those notions.  When they’re asked or told to change, they should be told to change with grace and patience because egos are hard things.

I read this and thought how appropriate it is an advice of various sorts.  It’s from Randy Susan Meyers and is primarily about writing workshops, which are places of grief and feedback for creative writers.  Randy is continuing the conversation around these and other quotes at this weekend’s Muse & the Marketplace, a helpful and memorable place where writers and readers gather in Boston, and for the record, a place I have good memories of:

Beware of hardening yourself to protect your ego. Even the smartest critique stings. It is common to hate, really hate, someone who points out that five backflashes in a row might leave the reader confused. I make a deal with myself when I’m ‘up’ in my writer’s group. I am allowed to think everyone is stupid for 10 minutes. Then I have to consider their ideas. I don’t have to buy them, but I must rent them.

To read the rest of Randy’s post, go here.

by Michael

Why Should It Mean So Much

Dag Hammarskjold, a twentieth-century diplomat, advisor, and leader is a companion of mine (through the text).  I read selections from his Markings from time to time.  They are poems, reflections, meditations, and musings.  Last night I read a few.  Here’s one from 1952 that seems compelling to me today:

How ridiculous, this need of yours to communicate!  Why should it mean so much to you that at least one person has seen the inside of your life?  Why should you write down all this, for yourself, to be sure–perhaps, though, for others as well?

I’m in the middle of revising another draft of my manuscript.  I’m walking through some thoughtful edits from Maya Rock, and the walk is both enlivening and humbling.

I’ve been sick for more than two weeks thanks to my generous son.  I’m still a little congested, in the head especially, and I mean that, at least, in two ways.  But Hammarskjold’s words come alongside me as I’m reading my edits, adding and cutting and thinking and shaking my head at some of the assumptions I make in my story.

I’m considering my draft in light of his reflection.  How he says writing, or communicating, allows a person to see the inside of your life.  How communication is for others.  It really takes me out of my head, where all the assumptions are, where all the answers are, and delivers them onto the page, into the conversation, in the space where communication happens between two people.

by Michael

Good News in Writing World

Chimamanda Adichie is offering the world another book.  I’m placing it in my to-be-read pile.  Her work is refreshing, precise, full, and intelligent.  Both her novels and her collection of stories leave me with a broader world, and I think of her as a gift to the reading public.

If you’re looking for something to read, Americanah is a good option after next month.  I read of the book that a part of its appeal is “its immense, uncontained and beating heart”.  Don’t you love looking forward to a favorite author’s next work?

It looks like Ms. Adichie will work into her novel everything from cultural analysis and race to loving long-distance and the politics of black hair.  Familiarize yourself with Adichie’s earlier work by stopping by her website.

by Michael

Ode to Gumbo & Other Memories

For weeks I have waited

for a day without death

or doubt.  Instead

the sky set afire

or the flood

filling my face.

A stubborn drain

nothing can fix.

Every day death.

Every morning death

& every night

& evening

And each hour

a kind of winter—

all weather

is unkind.  Too

hot, or cold

that creeps the bones.

Father, your face

a faith

I can no longer see.

Across the street

a dying, yet

still-standing tree.

So why not

make a soup

of what’s left?  Why

not boil & chop

something outside

the mind—let us

welcome winter

for a few hours, even

in summer.  Some

say Gumbo

starts with file

or with roux, begins

with flour & water

making sure

not to burn.  I know Gumbo

starts with sorrow—

with hands that cannot wait

but must—with okra

& a slow boil

& things that cannot

be taught, like grace.

Done right,

Gumbo lasts for days.

Done right, it will feed

you & not let go.

Like grief

you can eat & eat

& still plenty

left.  Food

of the saints,

Gumbo will outlast

even us—like pity,

you will curse it

& still hope

for the wing

of chicken bobbed

up from below.

Like God

Gumbo is hard

to get right

& I don’t bother

asking for it outside

my mother’s house.

Like life, there’s no one

way to do it,

& a hundred ways,

from here to Sunday,

to get it dead wrong.

Save all the songs.

I know none,

even this, that will

bring a father

back to his son.

Blood is thicker

than water under

any bridge

& Gumbo thicker

than that.  It was

my father’s mother

who taught mine how

to stir its dark mirror—

now it is me

who wishes to plumb

its secret

depths.  Black

Angel, Madonna

of the Shadows,

Hail Mary strong

& dark as dirt,

Gumbo’s scent fills

this house like silence

& tells me everything

has an afterlife, given

enough time & the right

touch.  You need

okra, sausage, bones

of a bird, an entire

onion cut open

& wept over, stirring

cayenne in, till the end

burns the throat—

till we can amen

& pretend

such fiery

mercy is all we know.

Kevin Young’s Ode to Gumbo in Dear Darkness