Midlife Meditation

  E pluribus unum: out of many, one. That's our United States of America summed up in three neat Latin words. To the world, we're a single, monolithic entity, the only true superpower left. American culture has conquered the world. McDonalds, Starbucks, Wal-Mart--our corporations are everywhere. American tourists are known for their loud, aggressive friendliness. We don't mean to be rude, but sometimes we just can't help ourselves.   25 years ago, I had the privilege of spending two years serving an English Methodist/United Reformed congregation. It was a "united church," a merger between two Methodist congregations and one from the United Reformed denomination, and as such, it had an ongoing identity crisis. Every time there was a pastoral change, the position had to constitutionally switch between Methodist and United Reformed. My first wife, Brenda, and I came to Trinity Church as a clergy couple with one year of student pastorate experience behind...

  I'm an Eagle.   In October 1978, my mother pinned a badge like this one to my uniform. It was the culmination of a ten-year journey, an accomplishment and honor achieved by only a small percentage of Scouts. My father became an Eagle sometime around 1940, and there was never any doubt in my mind that, as difficult as it proved to be, I would someday attain this rank, as well. All four of my younger brothers became Eagles, too. There was no way any of us was going to be the lone standout. And who wouldn't want to be an Eagle Scout? A paragon of honesty, reverence, and service? I bore this distinction with pride for a quarter of a century.   Until, that is, Scouting went south.   I mean that quite literally. In my youth, Scouting was a center-left organization, honoring diversity of creed and ethnicity, promoting global citizenship, responsible membership in the commonweal. Scouts were environmentalists, diplomats, public servants. Yes, there was a c...