Midlife Meditation

Last Sunday, I performed an annual ritual. At the end of a liturgical year, my family and friends gathered for a seasonal celebration that was bursting pageantry, inspirational messages, and sacrificial offerings. The spirit of the event was overwhelming at times, as both the celebrants and we worshipers were overcome with emotion, moved to ecstatic utterances. As with any such celebration, the conclusion and aftermath were a letdown. We left disappointed, disillusioned, but certain just the same that we will gather again next year for another Super Bowl party. I'm sure you got the joke long before you finished reading that paragraph. Given the football-related title of this post and the picture pasted above, there really can be no doubt what I'm talking about. I've also written many times in this space about the religious aspects of football (most notably here and here ), as well as the ambivalence of my mutual fascination for and repulsion from the sport. Like m...

When I work out, I greatly prefer the work to be literally out. Outside, that is. Running and hiking, my favorite sweaty indulgences, cry out for fresh air, even when the weather is wet and windy. I may come home drenched, but I'm always more vibrantly alive, and I know I've accomplished something. I've gone somewhere. That matters. Unfortunately, at 53, my feet can no longer handle daily pavement pounding, so for the last two years, I've added a bicycle to my exercise regimen, and here I have to admit to being a fair-weather exerciser. It's not that I can't ride in the rain, and if the temperature's not too low, I frequently do. When it's also windy and dark, though, I begin to worry about whether the other vehicles on the road--those weighing tons, rather than the few pounds of my bike--can see me, or avoid me. On days like those we've been having lately, I take my workout indoors to a spin class at 24 Hour Fitness; and if there's no class t...

Good God, make it stop! And why can't I tear my eyes away? Football scares me. I've written about this before, and I encourage you to peruse that post (as well as this one , which suggests the human tendency to turn even safety equipment into weapons if it will create an advantage in a competition is what occasioned the Flood). The elegant game of baseball aside, football really is America's sport. No other sport merges bone-crushing violence with arcane bureaucratic rule manipulation as elegantly and telegenically as American football. These two components--violence and creative rule avoidance--are the most American of vices. The US tax code is as voluminous as it is because every Congressional addition to it, whether its purpose is to plug a loophole or streamline a provision, provokes an equal and opposite reaction from tax accountants and the capitalists who hire them to find even more convoluted ways to shelter their income from the IRS. Lest you think...

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 ...

Disclaimers up front: 1) I actually like watching football, except when I don't. 2) I am a heterosexual man. With those things clear, I can now go on to write some critical things about the Y chromosome--or, as I like to call it when I am, yet again, taking apart a dogpile of kindergarten boys, the "Why?!?!?" chromosome. From 2011-2013, I was band director at Banks High School. Banks didn't have a lot going for it. It was an independent school district with just one school for each (primary, intermediate, and secondary) educational level. Its tax base consisted mostly of rural homes, so it's still in the austerity part of the economic recovery. While it is now building a new junior high, and its elementary school was built in the 1990s, its high school is embarrassingly decrepit, with narrow hallways, decaying infrastructure, strange smells, all the hallmarks of a district that has made getting by with what we've got the status quo for far too long. For all...