Midlife Meditation

St. John of Patmos, the Dragon, and the Beast Hey choir! Yes, I'm talking to you: the faithful few who are here every Sunday, come heaven or high holy water, up there in the loft waiting for your special moments to shine. You're the glue that holds this congregation together. Your nods, smiles, scowls, "Amens" and "watch yourself, preacher" are the applause sign on this variety show. You've seen it all, heard it all, since long before I entered this pulpit, and you'll be here for whoever fills it once I'm gone, and the next one after that, on and on until this church is no longer here. As reliable a core constituency as you are, you're still human. Sometimes you shine, sometimes you fall hard on your face, most of the time you're just normal folk like anyone out there in the pews. You need the magnifying glass of scripture too, convicting you of your shortcomings; and you need the word of grace, releasing you from the burden of g...

Too soon! As in so many other things, Donald Trump has defined the impending era for us via Twitter. Trump was commenting on an incident involving an American drone submarine being impounded by the Chinese navy. He called it "unpresidented." The tweet was later corrected to read "unprecedented," and there's at least a chance Trump knew that was the correct word, and just slipped up and used a nonexistent homophone instead, something I've done myself in the heat of passioante writing (both with a keyboard and a pen). Merriam Webster spun it into a "not" joke with its own tweet, saying "unpresidented" was NOT the word of the day, as that honor was reserved for the word "huh." Social media seized on the neologism, and it's been everywhere, as the nation tries to come to grips with what's going to happen on January 20. The scrambling to correct the Freudian slip--and the ironic glee with which it's been welcom...