Midlife Meditation

Just in case you were wondering, you need at least one hand free to take a webcam selfie. I have always had a difficult relationship with prayer. As a child, I had two prayers, at bedtime and at mealtime. They were short and sweet, so I'm putting them up here. You'll recognize the first one, though it was adjusted in a significant way by my parents. The second is a family blessing that came either from Germany or Sweden 150 years ago. Now I lay me down to sleep I prayer the Lord my soul to keep And in the morning when I wake, Make me good, for Jesus' sake. Dear Lord, come and be our guest. Bless this food which you have set before us. In Jesus' name, Amen. The original version of that first prayer should be familiar to many: the second two stanzas should read, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." My parents probably altered it because 1) death is too scary, and definitely not something you want on children's m...

I've had a lot of therapy. It's not something I'm embarrassed about. It's been an essential part of my adult development; without it, I'd be far from functional. Therapy has walked me through traumatic transitions in relationships and vocations, helped me understand where I come from and why I react to things in the ways I do. Most importantly, it's given me the freedom to choose how I will respond to situations that seem to threaten my well-being. As a young man, I often felt trapped by my personality. I'd be the lone introvert in a meeting, and because of my native shyness--what some of the retired farmers in my first church called "backwardness"--I could go for the entire meeting without saying a word. I didn't enjoy this. Often I had things to say, but I couldn't bring myself to interject them, to break the flow of the conversation, which seemed to naturally move from one extravert to another, with no room for me to insert my opin...

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us... (Hebrews 12:1, NRSV)   As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.   There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:27-29, NRSV)   Legacy figures prominently in the life of any family or community that has existed for more than a decade.   Last Sunday, Parkrose Community United Church of Christ, where I play the piano each week, celebrated its hundredth anniversary. At one point in the service, Pastor Don Frueh paid tribute to one of the oldest members of the congregation, who had belonged for a continuous se...

This little bungalow on Northeast 74th Avenue was just right for me when I moved into it. My ever-changing life had just taken a hard turn in a direction not to my choosing, but it was hardly the first time something like that had happened. In this case, I'd had two enormous transitions hit me simultaneously: my children were being moved to Idaho Falls, and my contract at a Catholic school in Vancouver had been canceled for looking into other jobs closer to home. Ironically, I found two jobs to take the place of that one: a church music position in Vancouver; and a 0.8 FTE music teaching job in Hood River. The 90 minutes of commuting I'd been doing was about to get much longer. This neighborhood was a good compromise between the two jobs, half an hour from the church, an hour from the school. It still meant crazy driving--there was no avoiding that--but it was close to both I-84 and I-205, so I generally had clear sailing the entire long way to work, whichever direction I w...

 I don't remember his name, but for reasons which will soon become apparent, I'll call him Adam. It was twenty years ago next month that I stepped off a plane in Washington, DC, and took the Metro to George Washington University, there to attend the National Convocation of Reconciling Congregations. I was pastor of one of those congregations, the Estacada United Methodist Church. Estacada is a small former logging town in rural Clackamas county, an unlikely place for a church to proclaim itself Reconciling, the word Methodists use to mean gay-friendly. But the small size of the church made it much easier to reach the decision. All it took was remembering that Marvin, who had grown up in the church, was openly gay. Knowing and caring for a gay man broke through all the barriers of ignorance and bigotry that kept most Christians in that time, and many even now, from opening their hearts to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. The vote went through in no time, ...

Wow. There is a lot of bad God art on the internet. Look through this blog, and you'll notice that I try to put an arresting image at the top of every post. For this one, I wanted something other than the typical old but virile white guy to represent God. I briefly considered a blue, flute-playing Krishna (nice to see God playing the flute), but Hindu art always feels schlocky to me. The same is true of most Christian art, by the way; I'm an equal-opportunity snob when it comes to religious iconography. In any case, I do like to think that, if God were to pick a contemporary human face, it would be that of Morgan Freeman, so here he is: Writing this blog has brought out the frustrated theologian in me, and I've gone on at length about a wide variety of theological problems. Today I'm going to tackle idolatry, in the sense of what makes a god obviously false. I will not be attempting to prove the reality of God (I'm no Schubert Ogden), but I will begin with my...

Did that get your attention? I was born in 1961. That put me in diapers during the Cuban missile crisis, in grade school through most of the Vietnam War, and in junior high during the "Your Chance to Live" emergency preparedness campaign. This seemingly endless series of film strips and short films presented arresting stories of survival in a variety of natural disasters, as well as, with the help of stock footage and dramatizations, of how to survive a nuclear attack. These lessons were powerful, terrifying, and largely pointless for the geographic region in which I was living at the time: Idaho, a state rarely experiencing any weather-related disasters or earthquakes, and probably toward the bottom of likely American targets for a missile attack. Regardless, we all sat and watched in shocked silence as one force of nature or war after another destroyed homes and lives. We never had a "duck and cover" drill, but we all knew which buildings in town were certifie...

GOD: Arthur! Arthur, King of the Britons! Oh, don't grovel! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling. ARTHUR: Sorry!! GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's 'sorry this' and 'forgive me that' and 'I'm not worthy'. What are you doing now!? ARTHUR: I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord. GOD: Well, don't. It's like those miserable Psalms -- they're so depressing. Now knock it off! ARTHUR: Yes, Lord. --Monty Python and the Holy Grail    It's true, I do like Monty Python's Flying Circus.   But that's a digression. The real point of quoting the dialogue between a scary cartoon God and Graham Chapman's King Arthur is the truth it speaks about popular theology. What comes next is, of course, the commission of the Quest for the Holy Grail, but that's another story.   Grass roots theology, pop theology, the opiate of the masses, whatever la...

  I called it my single parenting midterm: leave after church on a March Sunday in 1996, drive halfway, spend the night in a hotel, then drive the rest of the way the next day to camp in the Disneyland campground. The following day--Tuesday--we'd have early admission at the park by virtue of staying at an official Disney facility. We'd make the most of it, riding everything appropriate to two small children and their still divorce-shell-shocked father (the papers had only been signed six months earlier), until the park closed at dusk. The following day, we'd drive to Yosemite National Park, spend the night in a cabin, then tour the park for a day. The day after that, we'd drive all the way home. Along the way, we ate many of our meals out of a cooler. This was Spring Break on the cheap. And I mostly pulled it off. It was a simpler time in many ways. Sean and Sarah were 3 and 6, respectively. Their main concern in the car was who got to ride in the front seat next to...