Midlife Meditation

You know the story of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," but I'm going to retell it anyway: Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly moneychanger, is visited on Christmas Eve by four ghosts: his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him that his stinginess will doom him to a life and afterlife of loneliness and pain; the ghost of Christmas past, who shows him through a montage of memories how he became the man he is; the ghost of Christmas present, who shows him how some are rejoicing at Christmas, while others suffer, all of them grieving or berating the coldness of his heart; and the ghost of Christmas future, a silent specter who shows him how little time he has left, and what a miserable end he will come to, due to his solitary selfishness. The shock of the experience changes him into a man of love and generosity, and both he and the world are better for the transformation. It's been told and retold, performed on stage, filmed, animated, digitized, updated, g...

  Thanksgiving? Christmas? 2000-something? Or maybe late 1990s? I'm not sure. It's the only Anderson family dinner shot I have on my computer. From the size of my own kids, and the absence of James and Gail's kids from the table, I think it's probably somewhere around 2000 or 2001. The large bowl of candied yams is a sure sign it's one of the two turkey holidays, though the use of plastic plates makes me think it's probably Christmas. The china has traditionally come out for Thanksgiving, but Christmas is an anything-goes meal as far as dinnerware.   I was thinking all day yesterday of doing a photo essay about the giant meals we have on those two holidays. It's a tradition that probably goes back to 1991, the first holiday that my parents were well-established in McMinnville. There are probably pictures like this one scattered amongst the many branches of the family. My father used to set up a tripod to get everyone in, but the pictures he took--al...

Just in case there's any doubt at all about the intent of my last post, the one in which I announced my availability to perform gay weddings: Yes, I know it's against the Discipline (that's the United Methodist Constitution, for you muggles out there); no, I don't wish to do it in secret (no back alley weddings); and yes, I am not only willing, but eager to face whatever penalties may be imposed on me by the church that formed me as a spiritual being, ordained me as first a deacon and then an elder, and ultimately decided it had had enough of me, an antipathy I concluded within a year or two was and is quite mutual. As Robyn Morrison has eloquently detailed in the blog she shares with her husband, Gerry Hill , the covenant United Methodist elders enter into at ordination is fundamentally twisted. To be true to our vows, we elders must espouse and practice doctrines that few of us believe or consistently apply to our own lives. Elders flaunt their creatively adap...

A few days ago, my friend Gerry Hill  did something wonderful. I wrote about Gerry in my last post, describing his sincerity, integrity, and through-and-through Christianity. Right around the same time, Gerry posted on his own blog a decision he had come to: after decades of living with the hypocrisy of United Methodist acceptance/rejection of gay personhood, he was surrendering his orders . This is huge. Becoming an elder of the United Methodist Church is akin to becoming a doctor. It took me ten years from the time I entered seminary until the Bishop finally laid hands on me, and considering I only stayed in ministry another four and a half years after that, that's not great value for preparation. Most elders, once they get to that point, stay with the profession a good deal longer than I did. Ordination is not just licensure; it's vocation, and even more than that, it's identity. There are some elders who embody their ordination so deeply that, even if they keep it...

Be ye warned: the following essay says nice things about Christians. In the six months I've been writing this blog, I've had some harsh things to say about the church. The church that formed me, United Methodism, is, in my informed opinion, a spiritually and ethically bankrupt institution, incapable of acting courageously, its leadership hopelessly hobbled by the desire to preserve what power they have and to hang onto jobs that are rapidly becoming obsolete. Whatever convictions they have with respect to providing basic civil rights to sexual minorities take a back seat to covering their asses in the event of an assault from the right. Continuing in the disclaimer mode, I will also state that Christians in general are fond of imagery that just gives me the douche chills. I made the mistake of Googling "Christians" in a quest for an image to attach to this blog, and what I came up with was simply revolting: schmaltz, schlock, saccharine sentimentality with a fr...

  I can't say I'm surprised. I can't even say I'm disappointed. It's just United Methodists doing what they do best: hiding behind rules they claim to oppose.   It's hardly the trial of the century. These church trials have been going on for decades, and not just within United Methodism. All but one of the mainline denominations have a miserable history on this issue, trying clergy who, acting in the interests of compassion, celebrate marriage ceremonies for same-gender couples. It doesn't matter where they're located: pastors have been tried in both the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, regions in which a sizable majority of both clergy and laity oppose the restrictions on both ordination and marriage of sexual minority church members. Rev. Schaefer, the most recent victim of this modern dogma, was tried in Pennsylvania for performing his son's wedding.   What astounds me is how blind the conservative elements who control the majorit...

Yeah--I didn't see that coming, either. A drum circle got me into Orff. The dancing part didn't happen until I had my Level I training, and even then, I was far from comfortable with it. But I pushed through my discomfort, and began seriously incorporating movement into my classroom. Many more workshops, two more Levels, a Jazz Class, and my first national conference later, I can seriously say--finally, at the age of 52--I love to dance! Few people who've known me outside of the Orff world would believe this about me. Yes, I took a full year of ballroom dance when I was in grad school, and it has informed my playing of any music that swings ever since; but I had few opportunities to practice those moves, and over time, they atrophied. I can still do some basic swing and Charleston steps, but anything else I have to make up as I go. Prior to that year, it wasn't just that I didn't have dance skills. I hated dancing. I especially hated party dancing of the kin...

Yeah, I know. It takes all the whimsy out to see the people drowning because they wouldn't listen to Noah. Then again, as the story goes, they had it coming. After all I've written lately about the innocence of children and the selflessness of teachers, this is going to be one hell of a cynical blog post, of the "humans suck" variety. You'll see me tap into a variety of issues I have previously addressed, including health insurance, football helmet butting, capitalism, and that most horrible of children's bedtime Bible stories, Noah and the Flood. I may figure out a way to end it that's a tad less dark; the preacher in me is always looking for grace, after all. And let's begin. America's real God is the dollar. It's appropriate that our money has the motto, "In God We Trust," because profiteering is the greatest American virtue. Capitalists despise a monetary vacuum. Anything that creates a demand will be monetized as quickly as ...

I called this "Madonna of the Mutant Broccoli" when I posted it on Facebook, but those two bizarre vegetables are, in fact, romanesco. They're striking natural examples of fractal design, made up of patterns that repeat down to a very small level--though in romanesco the pattern doesn't extend into the micro-range. After spotting them at the farmers' market, Amy had a vegetable crush on romanesco for a couple of weeks. And then she had her fill. But they (and she) are something to behold! I just looked up chaos theory, something I first heard about in the original Jurassic Park movie, only to find out I was completely wrong about what it is. Please don't ask me to define the real thing; I would need far better mathematical credentials than my miserable showing in freshman calculus 34 years ago to have a shot at it. As best I can determine, chaos theory is about how estimates at the data level lead to apparently random results at the other end of a calcul...

There's a word improvisers use that I've incorporated into my daily vocabulary: heightening. In improv, heightening is adding risk to a scene by amping up emotions, adding elements that may seem random, or seizing on a player's goof and making it part of the scene that is unfolding. The goal of heightening is to raise the fictional stakes and make the game more real--reality, after all, is chaotic, not scripted--but in truth, the stakes are actually very low for the players. The worst that can happen to them is that the scene will collapse, end on a weak note, turn off the audience, all of which is part of the package when one is in an improv theater. Things don't always work out in a meaningful, hilarious way. Sometimes even the best improv troupes go into territory that makes the audience uncomfortable or just doesn't work. I've been thinking about heightening and stakes because, as my last two posts will reveal, I've had enough time in my new position...

Disclaimers up front: 1) I actually like watching football, except when I don't. 2) I am a heterosexual man. With those things clear, I can now go on to write some critical things about the Y chromosome--or, as I like to call it when I am, yet again, taking apart a dogpile of kindergarten boys, the "Why?!?!?" chromosome. From 2011-2013, I was band director at Banks High School. Banks didn't have a lot going for it. It was an independent school district with just one school for each (primary, intermediate, and secondary) educational level. Its tax base consisted mostly of rural homes, so it's still in the austerity part of the economic recovery. While it is now building a new junior high, and its elementary school was built in the 1990s, its high school is embarrassingly decrepit, with narrow hallways, decaying infrastructure, strange smells, all the hallmarks of a district that has made getting by with what we've got the status quo for far too long. For all...

It’s been a hard week. At least 90 per cent of the children I teach live in poverty. Their home lives are more stressful than I can imagine. I’ve had kindergartners pole dancing in my classes, third graders shrinking from a tap on the shoulder to get their attention, fifth graders snapping a “WHAT?” at me for pointing out a behavior that was obviously ill-advised. Many of the classes arrive in the gym where I teach shouting, pushing, running, despite all my teaching and re-teaching of expectations. Attention spans can be microscopic, and even the children who are trying hard to focus find it impossible when their peers act out. This was a week of copious acting out. In class after class, children were loud, aggressive, impulsive, hyperactive, combative, disrespectful; they pounded on the mallet instruments, had to be reminded again and again to listen to what I was saying, to watch what I was doing, to please just pay attention. It wasn’t just me, either: at both our early...