Midlife Meditation

Just how good can that place be? Requisite spoiler alert: if you haven't watched the ultimate (a word I rarely use, but it definitely applies here) sitcom The Good Place , but intend to (and why wouldn't you? It's ultimate!), and would rather not have any of its many wonderful twists and insights revealed prior to watching it, stop reading now, and come back once you're through it. Skipping commercials, it'll take you a little over eighteen hours. I believe that's time well spent. To make sure you don't accidentally glimpse a spoiler, I'll spend the next few paragraphs not  writing explicitly about The Good Place. As a young child, I had a shaky belief in Heaven as an afterlife in the clouds. Good people went there after they died. I didn't outfit this special place with any architecture or landscaping. I just imagined it was nice and restful. I liked to think of the grandparents I never met being up there, smiling down at me. As I gre...

Just one of the many things I've had enough of: Calvary. I've had my fill. Sunday morning was Easter, the day around which the Christian year revolves. In the ancient church, every Sunday was supposed to be a little Easter, and Easter itself was, well, the big Easter. Most churches have allowed the Easter to seep out of the other 51 Sundays, but all of them still make a big deal about the Sunday that is above all other Sundays. Anyway, I went to church on Sunday, as I have every Easter Sunday of my entire life. I went to sit with my recently widowed mother because, quite understandably, it wasn't easy for her to be their by herself. My father (as you know already if you've spent any time at all reading my previous posts) was a United Methodist minister, so being in church without him was a hard thing for her. For my part, I'm a former minister myself. I've also been a church musician for more years than I was a minister. When I wasn't prea...

Warning: the following blog post contains spoilers. That was some read. I'm referring to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, a "young adult" fantasy epic that, in my opinion as a sci-fi fantasy geek, compares favorably with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Madeline l'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time , and C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy  and Chronicles of Narnia. It's a multiverse-spanning work that tackles heavy matters of theology, philosophy, and quantum physics, while keeping its focus on two tween-aged characters, Lyra and Will, who are at the center of the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. While it's written for the YA audience, the attention to detail in both the world-building and the philosophizing is flawless, and there's plenty in here to bend the mind of this double-Masters degree reader. What grabbed me most--and has given this trilogy its notoriety--is Pullman's upending of Christian cosmo...

Judge Whapners (or Judges Whapner, depending on how judgy a grammarian you are). One of the many gimmicks that makes ComedySportz a delightful place to work is the way we award points in our competitive improv shows. For $3, any "loyal fan" (audience member) can purchase a pair of colored fly swatters called Judge Whapners. Once both blue and red teams have played a round of games, the judges in the audience (at $3, the cheapest judgeship one can buy) vote for the team that gave them the most enjoyment, and points are awarded accordingly. The gimmick is based in a pun that is almost as old as the show--Joseph Wapner retired from The People's Court  in 1993, before many members of our audience were even born--but the conceit is so funny that we've held onto it. Much funnier than the pun is the idea of judging between two improv performances using fly swatters. Taste in comedy is a decidedly subjective thing. From my position at the keyboard in the sound boot...

If you're a young person hoping to strengthen your tentative faith in God, seminary is the last place you should go. And yet that's exactly what I did. I need to back up a bit here: in the fall of 1984, I took my newly minted Masters degree in music education to the only school in Oregon that would hire me. The place was North Powder, a tiny community halfway between La Grande and Baker City. I lasted eleven weeks. I spent the rest of the year subbing, growing more and more disillusioned with the profession I had believed was my vocation. In March, 1985, I attended a convocation for persons considering entering the ministry, heard several preachers (including Bishop Calvin McConnell and John Schweibert) say things that spoke directly to me, and decided on the spot to enter the candidacy program. I applied to two seminaries, Boston and Perkins (part of SMU), because they were the only Methodist schools with sacred music programs, and at this point I didn't want that...