Midlife Meditation

Yesterday I wrote about a gay college friend who stayed closeted from me until our 25th reunion, though for much of that time, we were completely out of touch. Commenting on that blog post, another friend speculated about whether Scott was even out to himself in the 1980s, and wondered if coming out begins with oneself. Yes. So there's the answer to the story problem. Now, of course, I've got to show my work. There's a lot of it. This is about my personal journey of coming out agnostic. It starts in 1974, when I was on two parallel church-related tracks: confirmation and earning my God and Country badge, a religious emblem awarded by the Boy Scouts. Many eighth graders going through these initiation rites are fortunate enough to do them in a community of young people their own age. I was not. The church my father served in Emmett, Idaho was really too small to have a youth group, and I was the only Methodist in my Scout troop, so I was on my own with both t...

Faith is an island in the setting sun...proof is the bottom line for everyone. --Paul Simon, "Proof" In the past four years, Amy has seen, touched, heard, felt so many things she never knew were real. And so have I. There are things in heaven and earth that can only be dreamt of until they are experienced firsthand. Images, recordings, descriptions, artifacts can only hint at the thing in its fullness. Even once in its presence, one must be open to it, receptive to its essence, for it to permeate one's perception and alter one's being. I first visited the Craters of the Moon National Monument in 1970. I was nine years old. I found much to appreciate about it, but only at a superficial level. We passed through this volcanic blast zone many times during our years in Idaho. It was convenient and cheap, two essential criteria for us in our perpetually strapped condition. I quickly tired of it; it was not, after all, really the moon, but something wholly other, so...

13 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” (Luke 13:1-5, NRSV) I was taught in seminary that every sermon should boil down to a single sentence. It's a principle that always worked well for me, especially as I consider the number of overly complicated three-or-more point sermons I've heard and promptly forgotten. Simplicity is far more effective as a preaching tool. I used to like to embellish the idea of the sermon sentence by adding, "and ...

I spent ten years working toward the moment chronicled in this photograph, my ordination as an elder of the United Methodist Church. I was in the midst of my first divorce, so instead of my wife standing with me, it was my daughter Sarah, six years old and just out of kindergarten. My father was one of two elders I chose to lay hands on me, the other being my mentor, Ernie Bell. My brother Jonathan was ordained a deacon at the same service. I worked hard to get to this moment. I relocated to Dallas to attend seminary, to rural Illinois and suburban England to hone my skills, sweated over volumes of theology, wrote reams of papers, marched myself into hospitals, nursing homes, and living rooms, forced myself to learn new skills for dealing with people passing through the highs, lows, and far-more-frequent mundane middles of life. I taught myself to leave my sermon manuscript in the car, on the computer, and ultimately, not even to write it out, because I knew that I, as a congre...