Midlife Meditation

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...

Check out the horn-rims on those guys. The year was 1975, the place, the First United Methodist Church of Emmett, Idaho. I was in the eighth grade. My father, who was also my pastor, was proudly pinning my God and Country badge on my Scout uniform. He was 48; I was 14. I had just discovered girls, though it would be another nine years before I finally went on a date with one. The boundaries of my world were the walls of a decrepit middle school, a brand-new public library, a tiny manufactured home that was the parsonage, and this church. The parsonage was eventually sold (presumably so the pastor could live in something with room for a family), the school relocated when a new high school made the old high school building available, and the church was eventually torn down, with the congregation buying to a former Church of Christ as they, too, moved to a larger facility. Only the library is as I remember it--though now it is doubtless showing the wear and tear of its forty year...