Milton Brasher-Cunningham was born in Texas, grew up in Africa, and has spent the last thirty years in New England and North Carolina. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and has worked as a high school English teacher, a professional chef, a trainer for Apple, and is now an editor. He is the author of three books, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal, This Must Be the Place: Reflections on Home, and his latest, The Color of Together.
He loves the Boston Red Sox, his mini schnauzers, handmade music, and feeding people. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with Ginger, his wife, and their three Schnauzers. He writes regularly at donteatalone.com.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.torchflamebooks.com/milton-brasher-cunningham
Blog: www.donteatalone.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/miltybc
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/milton.brashercunningham
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5863259.Milton_Brasher_Cunningham
The Color of Together begins with the primary colors of life–grief, grace, and gratitude–and enlarges the palette to talk about the work of art that is
our life together in these days. The idea for the book began with understanding that grief is not something we get over or work through, but something we learn to move around in–something that colors our lives. Grace is the other given. Gratitude is the response to both that offers the possibility of both healing and hope.
PRAISE
“Locating ourselves in the adventure of life requires reliable tools for exploration. Milton Brasher-Cunningham gives us finely-tuned metaphorical gyroscopes to navigate our way with God, others and even ourselves. The Color of Together will help us find our place again and again along the way.” ~ Rev. Dr. George A. Mason, President, Faith Commons, Dallas, Texas.
“In his beautiful new book, Milton Brasher-Cunningham shares arresting thoughts on grief, grace, and gratitude. He claims that we are all shaped by our sorrows and generously tells his own stories of loss. All the while, he leads us toward hope. The Color of Together is both poetic and instructive, relatable and deeply philosophical. It awakened my heart to read this book; I hope it will do the same for you.” –Jennifer Grant, author of A Little Blue Bottle
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Can you tell us
what your book is about?
This book started as a grief book. When my father died in the summer of 2013, I experienced grief in a way I had never known. I understood, experientially, what I had only known from a distance as I walked with others through the loss of their parents. My first impulse was to call those friends whose fathers had died before mine and say, “I’m sorry. I had no idea this is how it felt. I meant well; I just had no idea.”
I began looking for words to describe what I was feeling. I read voraciously any account I could find of someone’s journey with grief. I didn’t need them to articulate stages—I had learned those in pastoral care classes—neither did I need a plan on how to get through the grief. Somehow, that didn’t make sense. I somehow knew grief wasn't something I was going to get through. As one fatherless friend said, grief is something we learn to move around in. What I needed were stories. Personal accounts. I needed voices to sing the ancient melody I could feel aching in my heart. Though what I was feeling was new to me, the books I read and the conversations I had made me realized none of it was new. I could see I was walking a well-traveled road. The realization was both comforting and disquieting. On the one hand, I was not alone; on the other, I was not unique. If I was going to give voice to my experience, I didn't want to come across as Christopher Columbus, claiming to discover a land that was already populated. I was not discovering anything. I was exploring: seeing what I had not seen.
I don’t remember how long it was after Dad died that I had a conversation with a friend and was trying to articulate what was I was feeling and learning. “The biggest thing I’ve realized,” I said, “is that grief is a primary color. It’s not something other than life. It is a core element.” I had begun to see that I had known grief most all of my life because I had known loss and change on a consistent basis; what I had not known was what it felt like for my father to die, and with him all those things done and undone that were a part of what it meant to be family.
“That means grief is not black,” my friend replied. “Primary colors are red, blue, and yellow.”
His words sent me on a journey researching not only color as a metaphor, but also other ways to talk about our shared experiences of life and loss. The book ended up with four main metaphors—color, music, punctuation, and food—all of which are things that matter to me.
What kind of message
is your book trying to tell your readers?
I started off trying to write a book on grief—on loss—and ended up discovering that grief is one of the main things that connects us to one another. The only way we live with all we have lost is to carry the load together.
Who influenced you to
write your book?
Anne Lamott, Frederick Buechner, Madeleine L’Engle, Annie Dillard, John Berger
Which author(s) do
you admire?
Along with those I said have influenced me I would also mention David Whyte, Rebecca Solnit, and Pádraig ÓTuama.
Have you suffered from writer’s block and what do you do to get back on
track?
I have had times when it was hard to write, but somewhere along the way I picked up the thought that rather than seeing those times as blocks to think of them as times when things were ripening, or even just laying fallow. My vegetable garden can’t produce constantly. There is a cycle of growth. A process. If I keep reading and jotting down what I can, it will grow into something.
If we were to meet for lunch to talk books, where would we go?
I would meet you in Durham, North Carolina—my favorite place on the planet—and we would have a long lunch because we would walk and talk between several of my favorite coffee shops, restaurants, and bars. And then you would move to Durham.
What do you like to do for fun?
The thing I love to do most for fun is cook for other people. Though it is hard work, my favorite way to spend a day is fixing a fancy dinner for a table full of friends.
Can you tell us about your family?
Family is a powerful word for me. Both my parents are dead now and my brother is the only other member of my family of origin. He is married and has two grown sons who are also married and have kids. I have been married to Ginger, my wife, for over thirty years. My mother-in-law Rachel lives with us. Ginger and I never felt called to have children of our own, and we have been blessed with a large chosen family: our former foster daughter and her wife, godchildren, and friends whose presence has grown beyond friendship. I could talk about what family means to me as long as you have time to listen.
What kind of advice would you give other non-fiction
authors?
Two things. First, read a great deal. Don’t just read about writing, or about the subject you want to write about. Read anyone who writes well. Get used to what good sentences sound like and feel like and your writing will pick some of that up as well. Second, write when you can. The day when you will have all the time and space you need to write well never shows up on the calendar. Learn to write in traffic. By that, I mean learn to write in the middle of the life you are living and the promises you are already keeping, even if that is twenty minutes a day. The minutes add up.
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