Midlife Meditation

These are not my students, but they're doing something you can see my students doing almost any day of the week. If church is the medium, the place and structure upon which and within which we exist as spiritual beings, then religion is what we do within that medium. That was not an easy definition to write. Like many Americans my age and younger, I've had a love-hate relationship with the word religion, trending more toward hate in the last decade or two. Post-War (World War II, that is) children have increasingly moved away from the clearly defined religion of our parents and grandparents, seeking less institutionalism, less dogmatism, less formality, less pomp, less structure, less of everything we were taught to respect as children. We shy away from titles, resist authority, eschew decoration. We long for freedom, intimacy, inspiration, and we find none of these in the stern, hushed gatherings our elders preferred, where we were expected to be seen but not heard. ...

Having church in Nashville: the Stacy Mitchhart Band performs at the Basin Street Blues and Boogie Bar. Music is my church, teaching is my religion. So I wrote in my last post to this blog . Much of my meditation on this formulation was about how I came to it. This post will unpack the first half of the formulation. Understanding what I mean by "music is my church" will require a discussion of what I mean by "church." My seminary education and my years both growing up in and ministering to churches  freight the word with countless layers of meaning. Let's start with the most obvious, the symbol that leaps to the minds of most Americans when they hear the word "church": a large brick and mortar (or lumber and siding) structure featuring a steeple and cross, and containing a large meeting room in which religious services are held. My early childhood years in New Hampshire predispose me to picture a white building in the town square. If you grew u...

,  I did some of my best ministry in this church, but it was never really mine. "Journalism is my church, reporting is my religion." --Jose Antonio Vargas on the Slate Magazine podcast The Gist , Tuesday, February 24, 2015. "The Lord works in mischievous ways, his blunders to perform." --William Power, Professor of Biblical Literature, Perkins School of Theology, c. 1986. Some people seem to know who they're meant to be from birth. Some have to wait until high school or college for the spirit to move them in the right direction, to hear the call of their true vocation, but once they've got it, they're happy to spend the rest of their working lives answering that call. And then there are those of us for whom the whole vocation thing is a ridiculous 5000 piece puzzle that takes us most of our lives to put together. In case you haven't figured it out over the last 300+ blog posts, I'm in the last category. In high school, ...

Judge Whapners (or Judges Whapner, depending on how judgy a grammarian you are). One of the many gimmicks that makes ComedySportz a delightful place to work is the way we award points in our competitive improv shows. For $3, any "loyal fan" (audience member) can purchase a pair of colored fly swatters called Judge Whapners. Once both blue and red teams have played a round of games, the judges in the audience (at $3, the cheapest judgeship one can buy) vote for the team that gave them the most enjoyment, and points are awarded accordingly. The gimmick is based in a pun that is almost as old as the show--Joseph Wapner retired from The People's Court  in 1993, before many members of our audience were even born--but the conceit is so funny that we've held onto it. Much funnier than the pun is the idea of judging between two improv performances using fly swatters. Taste in comedy is a decidedly subjective thing. From my position at the keyboard in the sound boot...

Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. He was 34. I don't feel like a "sir." I've noticed lately that young adults are calling me "sir," and I don't like it. I don't feel like I'm old enough to have earned this honorific, and frankly, I've just gotten used to being called by my first name by strangers, as happens all the time with customer service representatives, salespeople, doctors, anyone else I encounter who can figure out my name. My school students call me "Mr. Anderson," but my private students call me "Mark," and I'm fine with that. I don't mind that, when I log in at the gym with my fingerprint and phone number, whichever hot young receptionist behind the front desk calls me "Mark," whether or not this is his or her first time seeing me. That almost forced casualness has become a part of American culture, and while I occasionally roll my eyes at the loss of the formal mode of communication...

Once and future Presidential candidate Rick Santorum doesn't like hearing about Christianity's dark side. He's not alone. Nine days ago, in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama committed blasphemy: he spoke about the atrocities committed by terrorists in the name of Islam--this wasn't the blasphemy--and then made note of Christianity's long history of waging campaigns of violence against unbelievers, persons of other faiths, and even against other Christians who differed from the majority in terms of skin color, language, or interpretation of the Gospel. The President was not slandering the faith. All the crimes against humanity he referred to--and he did it in as diplomatic a manner as it is possible to say such things, short of simply not saying them at all--are well-documented historical truths, some of them taking place within his own lifetime. Truthful and diplomatic though these remarks might be, simply saying them was enough t...

Was it really just a month ago? John Kitzhaber kisses his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, after being inaugurated for a very short fourth term as governor of Oregon. I really liked this guy. I wasn't alone in liking him. The state of Oregon was so fond of John Kitzhaber that we elected him governor four times. If he'd wanted it, he could easily have won Mark Hatfield's Senate seat when it opened up in 1996; instead, it went to Gordon Smith, the last Oregonian Republican to win a statewide election. Had he entered and won that race, Kitzhaber might well have been in the running for President. But he loved Oregon too much to leave it, as any national politician must. So he finished his constitutionally-limited first two terms as governor, took an eight-year break, and ran again (while the state constitution specifies a two-term limit, there's nothing in there that prohibits rebooting after four or more years). He easily won that third term, even more easily coasted to reele...

9  Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.  10  Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.  11  Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all.--Ecclesiastes 9:9-11 The race is not always to the swift, but to he who keeps running. --Motivational poster from the 1970s Prior to 1984, this would never have been me. As a child, I was a couch potato. There wasn't much to watch on TV in those days--just three or four channels, depending on where we lived, all of them black and white on our 19-inch screen--but it still drew me in. Even in high school, I ...

Last Sunday, I performed an annual ritual. At the end of a liturgical year, my family and friends gathered for a seasonal celebration that was bursting pageantry, inspirational messages, and sacrificial offerings. The spirit of the event was overwhelming at times, as both the celebrants and we worshipers were overcome with emotion, moved to ecstatic utterances. As with any such celebration, the conclusion and aftermath were a letdown. We left disappointed, disillusioned, but certain just the same that we will gather again next year for another Super Bowl party. I'm sure you got the joke long before you finished reading that paragraph. Given the football-related title of this post and the picture pasted above, there really can be no doubt what I'm talking about. I've also written many times in this space about the religious aspects of football (most notably here and here ), as well as the ambivalence of my mutual fascination for and repulsion from the sport. Like m...