Midlife Meditation

This is not a young man's face. "There's a simple explanation for it," said the hand doctor, "and you're not going to like it." I didn't brace myself, because I knew what he was going to say next. I've been hearing it a lot lately, in fact. "You're getting old." Yup. Exactly what I was expecting. This chapter in the "getting old" volume of my memoir began a year ago. That's when I noticed an odd growth on the first knuckle of my right middle finger. It resembled a blister, though I'd done nothing to cause one. My first thought was that perhaps I'd been bitten by a spider or some other insect, and developed some kind of infection. I had a doctor look at it. She inserted a needle into it, drew out some fluid (this was not a pleasant experience), and concluded I had a ganglion cyst: fluid was leaking out of the joint, causing this strange growth. She told me to keep an eye on it, and come in...

It's not all sweetness and light. Middle age is wonderful! Except when it's not. But first the good stuff. When I started this blog in May, 2013, I was 52 years old, finishing my second (and, I hope, final) year as a high school music teacher with no clear path to returning to elementary general music, a year away from being married to Amy, and looking forward to the most active summer of my life. By the end of that summer, we had backpacked in the Olympics and the Tetons, I had blogged more than once a day (that's an average, of course: I didn't blog while backpacking in the wilderness). I wrote about many things: music, education, theology, Biblical criticism, those backpacking expeditions, gun control, politics. Implicit in all these topics, and sometimes very much on the surface, was my transition from prime adulthood to middle age. By and large, I've found middle age to be immensely satisfying. Most of the relationally driven anxieties of my ...

Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton after a fourth quarter fumble during Super Bowl 50. It was an ugly game. Most of the scoring came courtesy of the defense. Quarterbacks of both teams were sacked repeatedly, and both suffered humiliating fumbles that led to turnovers. The winning Broncos may simply have been the luckier team--or perhaps better at exploiting Carolina's errors, and at recovering from their own. So this was not a passing game. Despite that, the quarterbacks were still at the center of the pageantry, the hoopla, and ultimately, both the credit and the blame. Peyton Manning, at 39 well past his prime, was overjoyed to claim his second championship ring. Cam Newton, a 26-year-old whose best days have not yet come, was so shattered at losing that he was caught on camera with his head in his hands, weeping uncontrollably. I'm not a big football fan, though it always grabs me when I glimpse it at the sports bar where Amy and I shoot pool. There is ...

I'm very proud of this. Not so proud of this. I've always been DIY--up to a point. For most of my life, moving, house repairs, furniture assembly, yard work, auto maintenance, etc. have been things I did myself if I felt capable, got help with if I didn't (and could find the help), and only hired professionals for once those two avenues were exhausted--and only if I had the cash (or credit) on hand. When I was a pastor, that meant, often, that taking care of issues in my house was subject to the whim of the church trustees, which could often mean waiting a very long time. Leaving ministry meant it was now up to landlords and property managers to deal with home maintenance issues--and again, that could mean waiting a long time. A year ago, I made a big change, and became a home owner. Now, if something isn't getting done, it's my own damn fault.* I do need to say that my income has improved to the point that I can afford to bring in a plumber, elec...

The silver hairline of a 54-year-old. The wrinkles came with the package. Happy birthday to me! Cha-cha-cha. Waking up at 5:00 is handy for getting to school on time. It's not as helpful for getting a full night's sleep. This morning when I could have slept in--it's Spring Break, and it's my birthday--I was wide awake at 5:00. My body clock is stubborn in that way, something I attribute to my age. I spent a few minutes snuggling with Amy, then eased myself out of bed, put on my sweats, and headed downstairs to start on my birthday breakfast: pancakes with maple syrup. Normally I add blueberries to the mix, but I forgot to stop by a supermarket yesterday, so I settled for sliced bananas and the chopped macadamia nuts that were a present from my mother. By the time Amy came downstairs, the last of the pancakes was on the platter. We were able to eat together, and then she left for her BPA note-taking job in Portland. I took Sarah to the gym for Body Pump, t...

I was seven when I first saw Spock. My family was visiting my grandfather in Seattle. For some reason--probably because it was summertime--I was up later than usual. The TV was on, and I saw a few minutes of a Star Trek  episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday." It's the episode in which the Enterprise  is hurled back in time by some kind of anomaly, resulting in an Air Force pilot being beamed aboard to save his life when a tractor beam causes his jet to come apart. I saw him materialize in the transporter room where his first sight was of Spock. And that's it: I didn't see another episode until the show hit syndication in 1970. But the image of the pointy-eared Vulcan, so different from every other member of the cast, yet clearly part of the crew, let me know this was not just any science fiction show: it featured diversity at its core. And that's what I found to be true as I hurried home from school each day to watch what quickly became my favorite piec...

Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. He was 34. I don't feel like a "sir." I've noticed lately that young adults are calling me "sir," and I don't like it. I don't feel like I'm old enough to have earned this honorific, and frankly, I've just gotten used to being called by my first name by strangers, as happens all the time with customer service representatives, salespeople, doctors, anyone else I encounter who can figure out my name. My school students call me "Mr. Anderson," but my private students call me "Mark," and I'm fine with that. I don't mind that, when I log in at the gym with my fingerprint and phone number, whichever hot young receptionist behind the front desk calls me "Mark," whether or not this is his or her first time seeing me. That almost forced casualness has become a part of American culture, and while I occasionally roll my eyes at the loss of the formal mode of communication...

It's a museum of medieval art, most of it religious, in a building cobbled together from pieces of ancient European monasteries. And it's located in Manhattan. I've heard of The Cloisters before, but never understood what people were talking about. When they tried describing the place, I was skeptical: during my two years in Europe, I visited many authentically ancient churches, and church architecture remains one of my interests, even as I have left clergy life behind. When one has been to cathedrals in York, Dublin, Munich, and Rome, to name just a few I visited, even the oldest American churches feel juvenile. But The Cloisters did not disappoint. The organizers of this collection of pieces wisely chose specificity over broadness. Tapestries, altar pieces, reliquaries, stained glass, chalices, patens, tombs, prayer books: everything on display came from 12th to 15th century churches. In the paintings and sculptures, one can see European knowledge of the human form...

I have a problem with song lyrics: I just don't hear them. You may be aware I wear hearing aids. My hearing loss isn't bad; it's just at a couple of frequencies that are important for recognizing consonants in speech, and which also tend to be overused in popular music. This is why being in a party where the music is turned up too high is actually painful for me: it's overloading my ears. It's fun for me to blame the hearing loss on teaching one too many recorder lessons to large classes of fourth graders, but in truth, this has been going on for a very long time. I was first aware of the overload problem at my very first rock concert, when U2 played Autzen Stadium in Eugene in 1997. At the time, I didn't know the pain I was feeling was abnormal; I assumed everyone was feeling it, and used to it from attending dozens of concerts, probably already half deaf, and that if there was any abnormality in me, it was that I was a 36-year-old rock virgin not yet deaf...