Midlife Meditation

Shattered dreams. I'm so sorry, guys. I know how it feels. I know because I've been there. I've built my life around a single goal, allowed it to influence every decision, worked so hard for it that all other priorities fell away. For me, that goal was to be ordained an elder in the United Methodist Church. It took me ten years to achieve it, then just five for it to fall away. It was my second divorce that really drove the message home: it was unhealthy for both me and everyone I loved for me to continue clinging to that goal, and so I left ministry, initially on a leave of absence, but finally, two years later, as teaching began to open up for me, for good. Giving up on that dream was as painful as either divorce, and for similar reasons: it wasn't just what I wanted; it was, to a very large degree, who I was.\ So I understand what Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump must be feeling right now. All three of them staked their political legacies on ...

Consequences, Schmonsequences. They'll think about it tomorrow. Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war; this war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides... there isn't going to be any war.--Scarlett O'Hara It's almost as if they think tomorrow will never come. On climate change, health care, tax reform, civil rights, renewable energy, immigration, issue upon issue that directly affects their constituents, Republican legislators in both the House and Senate have acted, since taking office, as if they care nothing for the continued existence of the nation, the planet, or even their jobs. Of course, with the exception of getting far-right justice Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court (and only by virtue of first unprecedentedly freezing out President Obama's perfectly moderate nominee for a year, then altering Senate rules to avoid a Democratic filibuster), the first (and, hopefully, only) Congress of the Trump E...

These guys... ...really miss this guy. After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.--Mr. Spock, "Amok Time," Star Trek, 1967. They've wanted this a very long time: single-party control of Washington, the chance to open the floodgates and release volumes of pent-up legislation that's been stymied by a stubbornly thoughtful, responsible President. For all that time, they've been able to deflect criticism of their utter ineffectiveness as lawmakers, with their Senate majority too small to overcome a veto. Give us a President we can work with, they've said, and watch how much we accomplish. And it came to pass that, through a Constitutional quirk that gives more a voice to rural states than urban states, the election did miraculously go the way in which the Republicans had hoped it would, and there was great rejoicing, for lo, there would be a new King in Washin...