Midlife Meditation

The overabundance of flags, the pretentious sign on the podium, the table filled with (most likely) bogus documents, and most of all, the man himself--Lord help us. I never see it coming. It happens like this: I'm teaching a music class to kindergartners. They're deeply engaged, enjoying the story I'm telling, learning the rhyme we'll be turning into a percussion piece, playing the game I've just taught them. And then something happens: I child gets bumped by a classmate, doesn't want to partner with a neighbor, is told "I'm not your friend anymore." Those are the minor causes. Sometimes it's a child suddenly remembering she misses her dead daddy, or that his parents are breaking up. Whatever the cause, it's not something I can preempt, and now I've got a crying kinder on my hands. There may or not be sobs; sometimes (and these are the hardest ones for me to take) it's just tears streaming down a silent face. Then com...

One of these people is gay. I had no idea. Correction time: I said in my last post that I didn't really befriend a gay person until I was in my 30s, and serving a gay-friendly Reconciling Congregation. That was only partly true. In fact, I did have a close gay friend, but I was completely ignorant of his orientation. In fact, I only learned he was gay at our 25th college reunion, in 2008. It's not that strange that I didn't know this about him when we were classmates, living in the same dorm, part of a clique we called The Group. Scott dated women, belonged to a fraternity, and was, the last time I saw him before that reunion, engaged to a woman. Then he moved to North Carolina, and I heard nothing from him for about fifteen years. Then came the reunion. We met at an alumni mixer at which we only knew each other, got out of it as quickly as we could, and went out for a beer. There, Scott just mentioned in the conversation that he had a partner, and call...

Yeah, I know. It takes all the whimsy out to see the people drowning because they wouldn't listen to Noah. Then again, as the story goes, they had it coming. After all I've written lately about the innocence of children and the selflessness of teachers, this is going to be one hell of a cynical blog post, of the "humans suck" variety. You'll see me tap into a variety of issues I have previously addressed, including health insurance, football helmet butting, capitalism, and that most horrible of children's bedtime Bible stories, Noah and the Flood. I may figure out a way to end it that's a tad less dark; the preacher in me is always looking for grace, after all. And let's begin. America's real God is the dollar. It's appropriate that our money has the motto, "In God We Trust," because profiteering is the greatest American virtue. Capitalists despise a monetary vacuum. Anything that creates a demand will be monetized as quickly as ...