Midlife Meditation

A couple of weeks ago, there was a story going around the internet about how the State Department had commissioned a Vermont company to make 12,000 pieces of official stem- and barware for American embassies around the world, with a price tag of 5 million dollars, one day before the Republican-engineered government shutdown. People posting links to the story on Facebook were shocked, shocked that such a wasteful contract would be pushed through at a time when clearly the government was running out of money, and, further, that so much was being spent on these glasses (and yes, $416 apiece is spendy by any calculation) when perfectly good glassware could be had at  Walmart. And yes, that's the argument that was being made. This scandalous purchase--5 million dollars to an American company for products that would be made by Americans for use in American embassies, where trade with America is promoted by American diplomats--came at a time when Republican brinksmanship wa...

I love my students. I always have. It's what brought me back to teaching after my long side trip into ministry, and it's what's kept me teaching through steep professional learning curves, lay-offs, underemployment, and problem students. That last item is what occasions this post: some students are hard to love. And yet I love them all the same. Teaching music in elementary schools, I see all age levels from kinder to tween. Over the years, I've created my own categories to help me deal with discipline problems. Some children are attention-seekers who just want to know the teacher cares about them. Often I can channel this need into performing a simple task: have one of them be the first to model a clapping game with me, and they'll be on board for the rest of the lesson. Others are looking for the firmness they don't get at home. I have to be stricter with these children than I personally like to be, but so long as am intentional about tamping down any...

December 26, 1995, I set off on a vision quest. I had been separated (and eventually divorced) from my first wife for just over a year, and was embarking on what was to be (though I had no idea at the time) the endgame of my career as a United Methodist minister. The locale of my quest was to be Utah, more specifically the many National Parks that blanket much of that state. Given the state of my soul—I felt very much that I had been shut out of my marriage, and was beginning to feel that I was to be shut out of my vocation, as well—it seems (in retrospect) apt that I was shut out of most of those National Parks, as well, and had to find alternative wonders to explore. And why, you may ask, was I shut out of the parks? Actually, you probably don’t need to ask, because after eighteen years, the phenomenon is back: Republicans are holding the nation hostage to their demands, and the federal government has been shut down. I found plenty to gape at in Utah; it became, and remains...