Midlife Meditation

By nature, I'm conservative. If you've read any of my previous 470 posts, I know exactly what you're thinking: wwwhhhaaaaatttt???? So just to be clear: I'm not talking politics here, or at least, not about any of the positions being taken by Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, or (shudder) the Twit-in-Chief. The conservatism of which I speak is fear of changing jobs--or, more specifically, fear of losing a job. My father was a Methodist minister. That meant a meager income and frequent moves--on the average, every three years--but it also meant there was never any fear that he would be jobless. Since the antiquity of the Methodist movement, its preachers have struck a bargain with the church: in exchange for serving in whatever setting the Bishop chooses, they are guaranteed appointments through retirement. This clergy tenure system kept even grossly corrupt, immoral, and incompetent ministers employed. Mind you, there was no guarantee the minister would like where h...

It took me ten years to get here. June, 1995: a moment of victory, acclamation, as the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church finally welcomed me into full membership as an elder, a fully ordained minister, with all the rights and responsibilities thereunto appertaining. I had worked so hard to reach that point at which the Bishop, my District Superintendent, my father and one other elder of my choosing, and my daughter (in lieu of my soon-to-be-ex-wife) laid hands on me, I placed my hand on Jason Lee's Bible and took the vows of ministry, and my father's red stole was placed around my neck, that I should have felt overwhelming joy. I made it! A life of faithful service lies before me! I will never again have to worry about hunting for a job! The fact that the last celebration topped my list is a hint of where that career was headed. Before I get to that, though, I have to talk about several other things that made this moment far more bitter than...

It's the most iconic footprint in the history of the human race, and every time I look at it, I think about how permanent a scar has been left on a pristine landscape. Left behind in 1969, that footprint is almost certainly still there, nearly identical to its original impression. There is erosion on the Moon, but it exists on a millennial scale, as solar wind and meteoroid bombardment slowly smooth away such imperfections. Barring impact with a huge meteor, this footprint, and the many hundreds more like it, not to mention the tire tracks left by the lunar rover, will still be there long after humankind has forgotten who put them there. If you've had anything to do with Scouting lately, or visited a National Park, or even been to Burning Man, you've encountered the words "Leave no trace." It's an ethical approach to outdoor recreation that has its roots in the environmental movement of the 1960s. I didn't hear the words until about 2003, when I was tr...

December 30, 1999: the day I discovered my favorite place on earth. The occasion was my second post-divorce retreat to the desert. In December 1995, I drove to Utah to tour the national parks, something I had wanted to do throughout my first marriage but had never been able to interest my wife in. As luck would have it, though, that trip coincided with the Clinton/Congress budget standoff, and all the national parks were closed. I was able to see parts of a few, but only if they were visible from the highway (Capitol Reef, Zion, and on my way home through California, Death Valley). Within days of my second marriage ending, I knew I would repeat the odyssey, and this time I'd see Arches. On New Year's Eve, I made it. I only had one short winter day to see as much of it as I could. In term of size, Arches is actually one of the smaller western parks. It's possible to see most of the highlights in a single day, and I set about doing just that, visiting Park Avenue, the B...

I spent ten years working toward the moment chronicled in this photograph, my ordination as an elder of the United Methodist Church. I was in the midst of my first divorce, so instead of my wife standing with me, it was my daughter Sarah, six years old and just out of kindergarten. My father was one of two elders I chose to lay hands on me, the other being my mentor, Ernie Bell. My brother Jonathan was ordained a deacon at the same service. I worked hard to get to this moment. I relocated to Dallas to attend seminary, to rural Illinois and suburban England to hone my skills, sweated over volumes of theology, wrote reams of papers, marched myself into hospitals, nursing homes, and living rooms, forced myself to learn new skills for dealing with people passing through the highs, lows, and far-more-frequent mundane middles of life. I taught myself to leave my sermon manuscript in the car, on the computer, and ultimately, not even to write it out, because I knew that I, as a congre...