Midlife Meditation

I loved this when I was in junior high. But I never imagined I would BE this. Half my mouth is still number from this morning's dental ordeal. The occasion: whittling down a problem tooth to a nub so an artificial replacement can be glued onto it. This will be my fourth crown, making a complete set for the fifth tooth back in each quadrant. Last month, I visited my audiologist to get my hearing aids tuned up, the better to distinguish what people were saying to me when I was in Ghana. I also had the last of my pre-Africa vaccinations, and picked up my malaria prophylaxis, making me immune to all sorts of creepy crawlies. And, of course, in January space age lasers reshaped my corneas so that, for the first time in almost half a century, I can see the world with my own eyes. Add to this the portable computer I carry around in my pocket, and you can see that I really have become bionic, which, according to Dictionary.com, means "utilizing electronic devices an...

Check out the horn-rims on those guys. The year was 1975, the place, the First United Methodist Church of Emmett, Idaho. I was in the eighth grade. My father, who was also my pastor, was proudly pinning my God and Country badge on my Scout uniform. He was 48; I was 14. I had just discovered girls, though it would be another nine years before I finally went on a date with one. The boundaries of my world were the walls of a decrepit middle school, a brand-new public library, a tiny manufactured home that was the parsonage, and this church. The parsonage was eventually sold (presumably so the pastor could live in something with room for a family), the school relocated when a new high school made the old high school building available, and the church was eventually torn down, with the congregation buying to a former Church of Christ as they, too, moved to a larger facility. Only the library is as I remember it--though now it is doubtless showing the wear and tear of its forty year...

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.   When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"   Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”   Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”   So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.   Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.”   Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. (Mark 10:46-52) I was six when I put on my first pair of glasses. My mother loves to tell the story of my reaction, how I immediately bega...

Counting down to the New Year has got to be one of the silliest things our culture does. Our world is artificially segmented into time zones, which cause the entire planet to function as a 24-hour clock, the hours clicking along from zone to zone as if the planet was rotating like the ticking second hand on the 60 Minutes  watch. In fact, the planet rotates smoothly, its orientation to the sun shifting constantly. To experience it in real time, one has to be watching a sunset or, much better, a total eclipse of the sun. Instead, we rely on devices to tell us what numbers go with any given moment in time. Once a year, those numbers click over to a new year. The fact that our Julian calendar new year comes a week after the winter solstice, and has no relationship whatsoever to planting or harvest cycles, just underlines the arbitrariness of celebrating a shift of digits in the naming of the year. And yet we celebrate with great abandon. Two nights ago, Amy and I attended a conc...

Yikes! I wanted something somewhat goofy for this selfie, because I am, in fact, feeling odd about what happens in about 48 hours: lasers will reshape my corneas, and for the first time since I was six years old, I will be able to see the world without corrective lenses. Unless you knew me in my youth, chances are you've never seen me in my glasses. I got my first set of contacts in 1982, when I was 21, and since then, I've rarely worn glasses in public. I have this week in preparation for Friday morning's LASIK procedure, and it's got me feeling slightly nostalgic for the bad old days when looking up (and over the rim) meant not seeing anything clearly. Only slightly, though; there are many things about both glasses and contact lenses I will not miss in the least. Let's start with blindness, which I define not as the absence of vision, but the inability to function visually in the world. I can see without my glasses, but what I see is distorted to the exten...