Midlife Meditation

I did not grow up singing. That may surprise you, knowing I am a music teacher, and that I come from a musical family, but it's true: ours was not a singing household. My mother, though she did at times add choir directing to her organist duties, did not encourage her sons to become singers. We all studied piano with her, the prerequisite for taking up a band instrument, which we all did upon entering sixth grade (though in the case of Ocean, it was the cello); and most of us also learned the guitar. Some did come to sing, but it was on our own. Understanding this, perhaps you can see why I didn't start singing until the summer before my junior year of high school; and when I did, it was because of Glenn Jaquith. That was the summer I first attended a church camp. The camp my parents sent me too was called MADD, for Music, Art, Drama, and Dance. It was a camp for arts nerds like myself. It had been founded a few years earlier by several arts-oriented Methodists, chief ...

Blow this image up, zoom in on the far center of it, and you'll see a man with very little hair, wearing a purple shirt. That man is Doug Goodkin. I Googled him in hopes of finding an image of him working with children, but came up dry. Even though teaching elementary music at The San Francisco School is Doug's day job, our modern anxiety over posting pictures of children seems to have limited images of Doug to his weekend and summer job, teaching adults how to teach music to children, something he does all over the world. There's no need to blow this image of a different man who, like Doug, has little hair to conceal his busy head: I'm talking about the tall man in a red jersey (sorry, Andrew). His name is Patrick Short, and he is the founder and co-owner of ComedySportZ Portland, an improv troupe that performs fast-paced shows every Friday and Saturday evening, as well as teaching improv classes to children, teenagers, and adults. Like Doug, Pat travels extens...

I could not have been happier. Saturday I saw two of my favorite philosophies come together. These are approaches that have changed my life in spectacular ways, freeing me up from decades-old hangups to be funnier, more creative, more relaxed, and a far better teacher, father, partner, and human being. Some background: my career as a music teacher officially started in 1984, when I took my first full-time teaching job. That job lasted for eleven weeks. I spent the rest of the school year subbing, and by the time summer had arrived, had made the ridiculous (but far from unprecedented, given my age of 24) decision based on that one year that it was never going to get better, so I should become a minister instead. I spent the next fifteen years living with the consequences of that decision, finally leaving ministry behind in 2000 and returning to classrooms in 2002, first as a sub, then, in 2003, as an elementary music specialist. For two years, I did my best to figure out how to d...

This is a story about becoming. Many little boys want to grow up to be their fathers. When my son, Sean, was four, he went through a period of saying, "I want to be you, Daddy!" This was charming, moving, and affirming, all things that were important to me because I was in the midst of reforming my own identity: recovering from a failed marriage; embarking on a second, also unsuccessful, marriage; and coming to realize that the career I had chosen for myself, the career that was my own last attempt at being just like Daddy, was the wrong place for me to be. There was almost nothing in my world that made me feel good about myself, except for this little boy's admiration. The second marriage and the career ended within six months of each other, but the love of the child goes on. A couple of years ago, I began listening to a podcast by Marc Maron, a comedian two years younger than me who posts semiweekly long-from interviews with other performers that almost always d...

It begins Sunday for Christians, Monday at sunset for Jews. For both faiths, it is the holiest time of the year, the time that defines them as a people chosen by God to witness to the world. Both holy weeks revolve around the life of a reluctant savior, a man empowered by God to deliver others from misery and death. One was a prince who abandoned his royal inheritance to become a shepherd, until God spoke to him in the wilderness and directed him to liberate all his people. The other was a common laborer who, after a pilgrimage in the wilderness, became a shepherd to a small sect of his people, but who, after his death, was exalted by a growing body of followers who called him Prince of Peace. The one died of old age, gazing from a distance at the Promised Land he would never enter; the other died young, executed by an occupying power for his dangerous ideas, which included the teaching that all the earth could become a Promised Land. There I will end my listing of parallels betwe...

Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer. W.C. Fields It's that time of year again: the time when the thoughts of pious folk turn to the objects of their piety, and they engage in cultic rituals to observe that it is, indeed, that time of year. I'm speaking, of course, of baseball season. No, seriously, this is about Easter, and a little about Passover: religious festivals that happen to coincide with the beginning of spring (and baseball season, but that's really not relevant to this topic). A year ago, I started this blog with some of my long-festering objections to Easter. At the time, I muted my criticism in acknowledgment of my part-time employment as a church musician. Since then, I have left that position to concentrate my attention on full-time music teaching. I love my work, find it challenging and rewarding, and feel no desire to return to a church setting, despite having spent, prior to last November, ...

I waited ten years to become an elder, and fought hard to obtain that status. To an extent, it cost me my first marriage. Four and a half years later, I stepped down from my appointment, going on what has become a permanent leave of absence. Ultimately, ordination in the United Methodist Church just didn't work out for me. Increasingly, my former colleagues, particularly those in the Western and Northeastern Jurisdictions, have found the strictures of ordination an uncomfortable fit for them. Some of them have voluntarily surrendered their orders rather than continue to submit to church discipline with regard to the full inclusion of sexual minorities in the ministry and mission of the church. Many others have found themselves put on trial for disobeying that discipline, performing weddings for same-sex couples or openly acknowledging that they are, themselves, self-avowed and practicing gay men or lesbians. Meanwhile, I am still an elder, honorably located (translation: happily ...

Some disclaimers: 1. We did not see this sign. This sign is in Vermont. We have never been skiing in Vermont. Yesterday we skied at Mt. Bachelor, though we were not  on  Mt. Bachelor. Mt. Bachelor is a downhill ski Mecca, and we are not downhill skiers. We do enjoy Nordic skiing, however, and at the foot of Mt. Bachelor is a network of Nordic trails extending for many miles. 2. We are not highly skilled Nordic skiers. I've been doing it since 2000, but only sporadically. The difficulty of getting to trails through quality powder (Mt. Hood's trails are usually either sloppy or icy, and Bachelor is a 3+ hour drive from Portland) means that by the time I find my skiing legs, the season's usually over. Amy has only been doing this for two years now, so she's even less experienced. 3. This was only our third time on skis this season--and also our last. We had a snow day in February, during which we were able to ski in our own neighborhood, and spent one day at Teacup La...

The slogan always made my skin crawl. When I first heard it, the place was called "Show Biz Pizza." Eventually the name was changed to "Chuck E Cheese's," with ads featuring the eponymous mouse in both costume and animatronic incarnations interacting with children, and usually concluding with a child falling, in slow motion, into a ball pit. I never actually visited one of these establishments until I had children of my own, but I knew from the moment I set foot in the place that there was far more evil at work here than just a grammatically abominable jingle. Eventually that slogan was cleaned up so the subject and predicate could be in agreement--"where kids can be kids"--but in my mind the name should be changed to "Migraine Manor," "Ulcer Alley," or possible "Tantrum Town." Walk through the door and one is instantly besieged by the clamor of video games, background music, and shouting, screaming, wailing children. ...