Midlife Meditation

O would some power the giftie gie us  to see ourselves as others see us. --Robert Burns Well look at that, Andrew. You're keeping company with Robert Burns. Andrew is a Comedy Sportz veteran, a brilliant improviser who has performed in more shows than I can imagine. He's also a world traveler, both for business and pleasure. Right now, he's in Barcelona, attending an international improv festival. That's what led him to make this observation on Facebook earlier today: You know how our shorthand for French people is smoking, and our shorthand for Italian people is hand gestures and kissing on the cheek? Well here in Europe, improv shorthand for American people is grabbing guns and shooting. That landed him squarely in the company of Robert Burns, and the quote at the top of this blog. Improv shorthand is an occasionally uncomfortable thing for me as I do my work behind the keyboard. I hear that we're doing something French, and I fi...

In Texas, it's all big. There are some who will insist that Texas is not a true part of the American South. Its historical identity as, for a brief time, an independent republic, its blended Mexican and cowboy culture, its prosperity relative to most other former states of the Confederacy--there are many reasons to consider Texas more Southwest than South. And yet, Texas was very much a member of the Confederate States of America, and the last slaves to be liberated, two months after the rebels surrendered to the Union, were Texas slaves (an event enshrined in the African-American holiday known as Juneteenth). Texans disparagingly refer to Northerners as Yankees, enthusiastically embracing a patriotism that both celebrates American identity and stubbornly insists on defining it militantly and rebelliously. The only part of the South I've experienced on a personal level is Texas, more specifically, Dallas. That's even more problematic than calling Texas representat...

Gospel took me by surprise. When I first arrived in Dallas to enroll in seminary, my plan was to do a double major in sacred music and theology. For some reason, though, it had never occurred to me that it might be a good idea to check out the program I was going to be entering before I actually moved myself and most of my possessions into a dorm room. I'd gone to Illinois sight unseen, and that had worked out reasonably well, so why should I treat my seminary choice any differently? The answer, of course, is that I wasn't even in the program that led me to choose this school over any other Methodist seminary in the United States. I'd gotten into the Master of Divinity program without a hitch, but that was a course of study I could've taken anywhere else. If I wanted to earn a Master of Sacred Music, my choices were limited to SMU and Boston. Boston misplaced my application, so that left SMU. Just getting into the MDiv didn't mean I could be an MSM, as well; f...