Midlife Meditation

As I wrote in June (see  "Coercing God" ), I have some problems with prayer. That entry was mostly about the ineffectiveness of the practice, the way in which it extorts favors from God, and in the process casts an unflattering light on the deity. If God is all-powerful and all-loving, then suffering should cease to exist. If, on the other hand, God is all-powerful but only alleviates the suffering of those who pray or are prayed for, then God is a mercurial despot unworthy of praise. Since suffering is all around us, we can infer that God cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving; that, in fact, if there is any God at all, this deity either has limited power or has a cruel personality. In the face of such logic, one has to ask: whither prayer? Sunday morning, the church where I have been playing the piano for three years (and for the next month, after which I'm letting go of that job, but that's a story for another blog post) had a lay-led service. The pastor

If you're like me in a particular way, and people know you're like me in that particular way, and they're on Facebook or Tumblr or any of the other social media sites that constantly generate and recycle memes, you've probably been shown this by someone you're close to:   And if you're like me, and you've always wondered about why loud eating noises or leaf blowers or the repetitive on-off whine of a computer charger or an idling diesel truck make it impossible after awhile to concentrate on anything BUT those noises, then perhaps you felt a sense of relief at reading this random--well, fact isn't really the word I'd put on it, since it's more of a speculation, and just looking misophonia up on Wikipedia got me links to four other syndromes/conditions/behavior patterns that explain this sensitivity to noises--and then went right back to struggling to ignore crunchy carrots, closing windows to shut out as much mower noise as you can, and ob

When it comes to learning names, I don't. That's not entirely true. I do pick up names when I interact with people regularly in contexts in which their names are used. That's how I've picked up names of everyone at Comedy Sportz: whenever they play, their names are announced throughout the show. Church is another matter. I've worked in a lot of church settings, and even managed to learn everyone's name in a few of them. A few. One or two. In most cases, I only learn the names of those with whom I interact frequently. In my current church job, there are only a half a dozen names I can pin on people with any certainty, and only because they're introduced every Sunday when they make announcements. Fortunately the piano player doesn't have to call people by name very often. If the pastor doesn't know people's names, that's a whole other thing, and it can get ugly. And if it's a teacher--well, you try getting a kid's attention wit

Assuming I'm well enough to get out of bed tomorrow morning, I will spend the day teaching music without the use of my voice. It's not that I have no voice at all; I can speak (croak) well enough to be understood. Ask me to repeat myself, though, and you'll find me pointing at my throat and shaking my head. The best I can do right now is whisper, and even that takes an effort. I've also got the sniffles and a persistent cough, not to mention a slight headache, but none of that is severe enough to keep me home. The two days I missed last week have already set me back too much. So tomorrow, barring a fever, I will get up at 5 and drive to school, where I will teach seven half-hour music classes without using my voice. Sounds (ha!) ridiculous, doesn't it? And it certainly feels ridiculous. But I've done it before. I've taught general music, preached sermons, even led choir rehearsals with laryngitis. Every time I get a cold, it eventually moves to my che

Did I mention I like Star Trek ? Welcome to Sisko's Creole Kitchen, an establishment that epitomizes the economics of the 24th century, when technological innovations work hand-in-hand with fully enlightened attitudes toward work and leisure to liberate human beings from wage slavery. People are no longer locked into drudgery by the need to earn a living wage, for all essential human needs are provided by society. Money is a dim memory, as anything one wants or needs can be instantly replicated. Individuals are freed up to follow their true vocations, whether that means enlisting in Star Fleet to explore the galaxy or opening a five-star restaurant in New Orleans. This doesn't mean that anyone can just do exactly what he or she wants. Joseph Sisko, I assume, prefers serving authentic dishes made from scratch, rather than replicated to identical perfection, which means someone still has to catch the crabs for his kitchen, and someone else has to cook it. I expect there

"You're so calm. I wish I could be that way." I had just presented a quick, concentrated lesson to other music teachers at Orff 101, the annual introductory workshop put on by the Portland Orff Schulwerk Association, of which I am now vice president. Every member of the board presents at this event, and from what I saw of the others, we were all confident, prepared, and at ease. Except apparently we weren't. Though I should qualify that statement: I was, in fact, at ease, but one of my colleagues was not. I'm sure she's fine in a classroom, and her lesson was masterfully presented; but from what she told me, she was inwardly extremely nervous, probably from delivering her lesson to adults, rather than children. I'm an introvert. Introverts are supposed to shy from microphones, stages, podia, lecterns. We don't like to raise our voices, because we don't like to hear our voices. Public speaking, teaching, performing should tie us in knots of

Stupid body clock. I'm not a sleep fan. Life seems far too short to spend such a large amount of it unconscious. I have so much to see, do, taste, touch, feel, and I don't accomplish any of that while I'm asleep. My body seems to understand this, and rarely permits me more than six hours of uninterrupted sleep. In fact, even when I get six hours of sleep in a night, it's usually with interruptions: I'm such a light sleeper that the gentle "ping" sound my phone makes when it gets an email is enough to jolt me awake, which then triggers my middle-aged need to visit the bathroom and, on the way back, have a sip of water. This might seem ideal for a person who, as I said, wants to accomplish so much. And certainly there were times during the summer when I relished the opportunity to rise in the pre-dawn hours, take a run, have breakfast, and write a blog post before anyone else in the house was up. I haven't been a summer slug-a-bed since college. D

These weapons are different. That's the argument President Obama has used to justify intervening in Syria: chemical weapons cross a line. Go ahead and kill civilians with bullets, grenades, missiles, bombs, and as long as there's no chemical in there except explosives, we're good. Gas them, and we're no longer good. It's an odd argument to make, but wholly consistent with the hypocrisy of international law in matters of war. The Chemical Weapons Convention was introduced in 1968 by an 18-nation coalition. Since then, 175 other nations have signed the treaty, though not all have ratified it. If Syria adds its name to the treaty, the total will be 194. Chemical weapons are, without a doubt, horrible things. Slow, agonizing deaths by seizure and asphyxiation are crimes against humanity. There is no question about this. The question for me lies in the fact that these weapons have been singled out for condemnation. Biological weapons have also been condemned f

  "Anything war can do, peace can do better." --Desmond Tutu   How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb really has to want to change. --old joke   I woke up to it.   I was living in the Peace House on September 11, 2001. I awoke, as I did every morning in those days, to OPB. It was around 6 a.m. Pacific time, and the first plane must have just struck, because the story went something like this: "We're receiving reports that an airplane may have collided with one of the World Trade Center towers." It didn't take long for more detailed news to hit the airwaves, and then the second plane struck the second tower, I turned on my television, and watched the towers collapse.   Morning prayers were solemn, frightened; none of us knew what to make of it. In the days that followed, I found myself sinking into a deep melancholy. The world had just changed in a horrible way. One morning I was driving on F

  Coda, outro, final cadence, fermata, cut-off: I'm out.   Last days with students always have a bittersweet quality. Students are children on loan, young people I have the privilege (usually), responsibility (always), or obligation (rarely) to work with, nurturing their development into musically literate human beings. I take this responsibility very seriously, and I never take the privilege for granted. Two years of layoff, followed by two years of only half-time employment, have taught me just how fragile is my hold on this vocation.   I came to Banks hoping it would be the final stop on my vocational pilgrimage. It was a promising setting: an elementary school with a dedicated music room that had been designed by a music teacher, separated from the classroom wing, connected to the stage; and then a PTO that jumped at the chance to purchase, in just two years, enough Orff instruments for a class of 30. Add to that a rapidly growing children's choir, and I couldn

Getting out of limbo was messier than I'd hoped. To be fair, it's almost miraculous that this didn't turn into a colossal cluster cuss. Having a final interview in Reynolds the day before I was supposed to report for in-service in Banks, not even knowing the result until lunch time on that in-service day, then figuring out how to do justice to my first days in Reynolds without completely abandoning my Banks students was just the tip of this transitional iceberg. I knew it was creating a headache for the Banks administration, and if there's one thing I hate doing, it's making life harder for others. I've never wanted to be a bother. I don't like leaving a mess for anyone. I police my campsites not just for my litter, but for those of previous campers. I put the lid down on the toilet. I put my dishes in the dishwasher rather than the sink. I would bus my own dishes at restaurants if it was allowed--and if it didn't mean taking someone else's live

Full disclosure: I have never limboed. But I do know a thing or two about being in limbo. I have often found myself trapped in transition, not knowing what the future holds, desperate for resolution, stuck on a tritone that simply will not resolve. It's the waiting place, the most useless place a human can be, rendered all the more uncomfortable by a hefty dose of anxiety over what's on the other side. Waiting for the test results, waiting for the judge's verdict, waiting for the excrement to hit the ventilator, the other shoe to drop, the phone to ring--it's never pleasant, even when good news may be in the pipeline. When there's a strong chance of bad news, it's far worse. It doesn't even have to be anticipated news that amps up the angst. When I was nine, I broke my right arm in a ridiculous accident involving a badminton bird, a slide, and a garden hose. My parents put my arm in a makeshift sling (which might have been made from my Cub Scout necker