Midlife Meditation

My wakeup call. I grew up in church. My father was a United Methodist minister. My childhood was marked by that: the frequent moves making it difficult to keep friends and, by the time I was in high school, to even make them in the first place; the many evenings when Dad was absent from our home due to a crisis, a call, or a meeting; and the weekends marked by Dad's Saturday night cramming for his Sunday sermon. It took a major illness to keep me from being in the pew for that sermon. As I grew older, I acquired church jobs of my own: watching children in the nursery, reading litanies and Bible lessons from the pulpit, eventually typing and printing the Sunday bulletin and monthly newsletter as Dad's church secretary. When teaching music proved more difficult than I expected, my 23-year-old attention span pivoted instantly to following in my father's footsteps, and going to seminary. I arrived at seminary already steeped in church life; and yet, in a way, I...

These two pictures are of the same people. The older one is me; the younger (by 23 months ten days) is Ocean, who throughout childhood and adolescence was my closest friend, favorite playmate, co-producer (we did radio parodies), and partner in bickering. He was given the name Stephen at birth, and kept it until, at 36, he renamed himself. The decision has not been well-received by our parents, and fourteen years later, the jury is still out among our other brothers. For my part, I've always respected the right of individuals to choose their own names. I just haven't ever felt the need to change my own--except during me first marriage, when I hyphenated my last name.   I have four younger brothers. Each is unique. We're all artists in one way or another, and several of us write. Three of us have also been involved in education. Two have been ordained, though neither remained in ministry. All have been married, though only two remain married to their first and (we all ...