Midlife Meditation

The periodically blown-down and re-erected beach cross at Camp Magruder. There's nothing like a good picture to start an essay. When I sit down to write a post for this blog, my first task is finding an image. This helps me stay focused on the thesis for the essay. It also gives the post a good visual hook for the tiny bit of publicity I do on Facebook and Twitter. Finding the right image usually takes just a couple of minutes: if I can't think of any photos I've taken myself, I just go to Google and search a few keywords. I find one that grabs me, copy it to the blog, and I'm off. There are times, though, when the search for an image alters the focus of the essay. Such was the case today. I knew I wanted to write about a racial incident at United Methodist Camp Magruder in 1996. When I Google "Methodist Camp Magruder," the result of my search was dozens of campers, young and old, splashing in the surf, playing tug of war, riding in canoes, sing...

Growing up immersed in religion meant there was nothing for me to be converted  to , but arriving at adolescence awkward, lonely, and insecure meant I had plenty of things to be converted  from.  That's probably true of most high school freshmen, fed up with being children, their moods swinging without warning, clearly unready for adult pursuits. The reboot I had hoped would come with baptism never materialized, so I needed something else, something more radical, powerful, effective. It took me two years to find it, two years of privately sobbing into my pillow behind a locked bedroom door, two years of longing for a deeper, more sincere connection than I could find at school or at church. It wasn't even me who found it. My parents learned of a church camp for artistically oriented teens, and sent me to it. MADD (Music, Art, Drama, and Dance) camp was exactly what I'd needed: a place where I could mingle with (mostly) safe Methodist youth, playing my trumpet, writ...

Have you checked Facebook lately? That's a silly question. If you're reading this, you probably came to it via the link I posted on Facebook. So for all of us who spend reasonable to large chunks of time on Facebook, here's an observation: there's been a lot about the death of Robin Williams. I've clicked on some of it. I even contributed to it with an essay of my own.  It's understandable many of us would be affected by this great artist's tragic death. One also has to wonder, though, whether it's getting maybe a bit too much attention, especially when, in some outlets, it's crowded out coverage of what's happening in Ferguson, Missouri. That seems to be abating: a cursory glance at my Facebook feed just now (though please note that my friends list is rather heavily weighted with progressive activists) revealed more Ferguson than Williams links. Perhaps it's just people getting past their momentary obsession with a celebrity's dea...