Midlife Meditation

On the list of ideas that aren't new is graphics depicting human development from infant to elder. Just Google it. What has been is what will be,      and what has been done is what will be done;      there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Newness is the burden of youth. (Me) I can remember having the illusion of originality. I had it as a musician, a writer, a seminarian, a preacher: the sense that what I was doing was new, unique, never before created or experienced. This song I was writing was unlike anything ever composed before, this sermon was looking at this verse from a brand new angle, this editorial was revealing the truth that no one had ever put in words before, this paper was synthesizing theology and aesthetics as no thinker ever had. And as far as my own knowledge was concerned, I was right about these things: I had never encountered these ideas before. At times, the reception to what I had created s...

Mr. Peabody's WABAC machine was far more versatile than mine. My Wayback Machine is stuck. It has four triggers, all of them popular songs from the second half of 1984: Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You," the Cars' "Drive," Chicago's "Hard Habit to Break," and Wham!s "Wake Me Up Before You Gogo." Just a few beats of any of those songs, and I'm transported back to the driver's seat of my first car. It's a brown 1978 Celica GT, and I've only owned it for two months. I'm heading home on I-84 to my apartment in LaGrande from the tiny hamlet of North Powder. I've been struggling with my first teaching job, finding the reality of junior high and high school music is nowhere near what I'd hoped it would be, though the elementary teaching shows promise. More than the students, I'm finding the principal/superintendent almost impossible to manage. I'll be out of this job in a few...

Yes, it's come to this. I remember the exact moment I turned into a classical curmudgeon. The year was 1997, so I was 36. Young, you might think, for a curmudgeon, but bear with me. I had taken my second wife on a date to a concert of the Oregon Symphony. We sat down in our mid-priced seats on the main floor, beneath the balcony. I scanned the program notes, learning about the background of the soloist who would perform during the concerto, picked up a thing or two I hadn't known (despite spending most of my junior year at Willamette studying Beethoven) about the symphony that would conclude the concert, I allowed myself to relax into the familiar polychords of an orchestra warming up, applauded when the concert master walked onto the stage, felt my anticipation grow as the orchestra tuned, applauded as the conductor walked onto the stage, bowed, stepped onto the podium--all the rituals that put me in the right frame of mind to be at the receiving end of a performance...

This bad boy needs a time out. Yes, he really said it. I saw a quote on Facebook yesterday that left me speechless. The statement was so insane that I couldn't even begin to form a response to it. Senator Rand Paul had, during a Senate committee hearing, equated the concept of a right to healthcare with slavery: With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.  It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses . Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery. I’m a physician in your community and you sa...

News  giving fiction a run for its money. The parallels are manifold: a prominent southern "New Democrat" ascends to the Oval Office in large part through the advice and machinations of his brilliant Yankee wife. Their marriage is a constant dance of political realism, compromise, and genuine affection. There's an implicit understanding that she will remain in the back seat throughout his term, though he may occasionally grant her a more relevant role than is usually afforded first ladies. If she can only be patient enough, her day will come. It was clear from the first episode of Netflix's House of Cards  that, in adapting the BBC political melodrama for American audiences, the creators had elected to base the principal characters, Frank and Claire Underwood, on Bill and Hillary Clinton. While the corrupt, felonious, and ruthlessly pragmatic Underwoods frequently have me (and many a professional pundit) choking on the outlandishness of their schemes, they...

Sorry, guys, but I'm just not that into you. "This is not a marketing call. We'd just like to ask you a few questions about your recent cancellation of your AT&T account." "Okay, I'm game. Fire away." For the next fifteen minutes, I answered mostly multiple choice, some yes-or-no, and a very few open-ended questions about a decision I made last fall, but didn't implement until May 2: the end of a thirteen-year relationship. AT&T had been my cell provider since 2002, when I decided to reactivate my teaching license and spend a year subbing while I figured out what to do with my life. To maximize my classroom days, I needed to be reachable wherever I might be and, more importantly, I needed to be able to constantly call in to the automated "Subfinder" systems of the dozen or more districts I was registered with, picking up whatever job I could find. That meant having a cell phone with all those numbers on speed dial, so...

Gotcha! I got my first and, for 28 years, only speeding ticket in 1987. I was student pastor of a small United Methodist Church in rural southern Illinois called (I'm not making this up) Seed Chapel. I had just learned that one of my parishioners had suffered a heart attack and been taken by ambulance all the way from Oblong to Urbana, as Crawford County's only hospital couldn't begin to address his needs. For the first time in my shortish career, I had an urgent mission: to drive to Urbana and do all the things ministers do when they make a hospital call. It's almost a hundred miles from Oblong to Urbana--the same distance as between Portland and Eugene--so I had a big day ahead of me, and I was eager to get started. I left Oblong faster than I realized, accelerating to 40 while still in the 30 mph zone. A police car passed me headed the other direction. Its lights went on almost immediately, it executed a quick u-turn, and came up behind me. I pulled over, ...

Every class has at least one. Some of them have perpetual chips on their shoulders. They bristle at every perceived offense, whether it comes from a peer or the teacher. "Bristle" isn't the right word, because often the bristling turns into an explosion: shouting, a tirade that cannot be turned off no matter what the likely consequence will be. At times, the shouting may give way to outright violence: hitting, kicking, battery with some convenient object. In the music room, those objects are mallets and xylophone bars; in regular classrooms, they may include pencils. The eruption can only be stilled when the child leaves the room, hopefully voluntarily, but sometimes only with the help of a staff member summoned with an emergency call to the office. Some of them are simply curious. They wander around the room, picking up and manipulating anything that catches their eye, and nothing short of restraints will still them from this activity. Again, consequences ar...