The Meaning of Life and Other Minor Details: Practicing Mindfulness After Fifty

Last night, we sat in front of the television and watched the announcement of the Grand Jury decision from Ferguson, Missouri. From the time the broadcast started, there was a split screen, one camera on the crowd and another on the DA who was reading the lengthy statement. For a while, we watched the people straining to hear what he was saying on their radios and phones. Then, when he got to the point and announced that the Grand Jury had voted not to indict the white policeman who shot Michael Brown, we watched the people process the information, at first in stunned silence. Then the protests started. Even as I write that, just like the camera crews, I realize was expecting them to begin almost on cue. We were waiting. So, I watched them start up, then heat up, and Sarah tracked them all over the country on Twitter. Then, at around 11:00, we called it a night. That, friends, is one example of what is known as White Privilege. I had built my evening tv viewing around the press c

When I was in fifth grade at Littleville Elementary School, something magical happened. One day, our teacher announced that the band teacher from the nearby high school would be coming to Littleville to talk to kids and their parents about joining the band. It was 1973, and resources for extra-curricular activities--heck, resources for curricular activities--were limited. I remember in previous years, our musical exposure at school had been the on the rare occasions when our teachers had brought out a box with mostly percussion instruments and let us play with them, mostly trying to keep time while a record was playing. This was different. This was band. I could hardly wait for the meeting. When the evening came, the band director, Mr. Wright, brought a variety of instruments so that we could try them out and, with his advise make our selection. I realize looking back that, of course, he wanted a well rounded group of instruments, which is probably why I became a flute player. From tha

First of all, let's just get it out there: there IS a gay agenda. Sort of. But it's probably not what you're thinking. When anti-gay people speak of a "Gay Agenda," they make up some items to maintain the politics of fear that have proven successful. Gays getting married. Gays having children. Gays in schools. Gays in the military. Gays in the workplace. Gays in church. Gays in the government. Gays parading. Gays everywhere. Wait. No, that's not scary enough, not to mention that it's already the case. Gays converting your children. Gays converting YOU. Gays in YOUR church. Gays being treated like they are normal, even when everybody-knows-what-they-do-in-bed. Gays running sex dens and converting you and your children as you are mesmerized by sequins and disco music. None of that is my gay agenda, neither the real nor the absurd, nor the in-between spaces where sexuality, gender, and everyday life interact fluidly and contingently. FOX News is making stuff

The cat hated everybody. Everybody, that is, except me. And Sarah, of course--but she had owned Sarah for seventeen years, so that was to be expected. I only knew her for five months, and I didn't really expect her to warm up to me. More than that, I never expected to warm up to her. So when we helped her to her final sleep on Monday, the last thing I expected was to feel what I felt and react how I did.  First of all, I am not a cat person. I had a cat once, and I despised it. Yes, my cat-loving friends will be shocked at that. Kitty was part Siamese and was mean. Worse than that, she caused me to lose sleep every night. If she was outside, she wanted in; if she was inside, she wanted out. Day in and day out. Why didn't I just leave her in or out, you might ask? Well, I believe if you ask that, YOU are not a cat person. She would come to my bedside and claw at the blinds until I was awake. If I shooed her away, she'd wait till I lay back down and begin again. When she was

Upon thinking about my first Dragoncon experience, I wanted to set down a list of important lessons learned. They are in no particular order, but some are more important than others. 1. It is invaluable to go your first time with someone who has been many, many times. Sarah not only knows how to navigate the hamster tubes that connect the conference hotels, she also knows the back stairs to the back doors to get out the back way when 40,000 people are trying to go up 6 elevators in the Marriott. 2. Dragoncon before 9:00 pm is very different from Dragoncon after 9:00 pm. Do not take children to Dragoncon after 9:00 pm. We did not. 3. Batman and Spiderman can come in all shapes and sizes. If the first thing you notice when you see a person in costume is body size/shape, you need to tweak how you look at things. I had to tweak how I looked at things. 4. Good costumes take at least a year to design and execute. Poor costumes are thrown together in the car on the way downtown. If you want

This morning we found an abandoned kitten outside the apartment. Well, actually, Duncan the Scottie "treed" it under the stairs and I dug it out from among spider webs and dead leaves. If I could pause writing now to show you a video of the pandemonium that ensued, that would be better than I could describe it. Since I can't, I'll do my best. I walk in with a screaming 3-day old kitten that looks more like a baby skunk or possum or rat. I will say that Duncan and I were both fairly proud of ourselves for the rescue--he was prancing while I was still covered in webs and leaves, grinning from ear to ear. Sarah, determined that she's about to die from an oncoming cold, is sitting on the couch with her phone in her hand about to call in sick to work. She never did make that call; the immune system kicks in like a machine when there's something bigger than us involved. Within seven and a half minutes, Sarah was out the door on the way to Kroger, having given me ins

Spiritual Audacity and Radical Amazement Last week I discovered a document I never knew existed: the manifesto signed by 80 Protestant ministers in Atlanta in November 1957 in response to President Eisenhower’s sending federal troops into Little Rock to allow Black children to go to schools in their own neighborhoods (See   http://rccapilgrims.ning.com/profiles/blogs/80-atlanta-pastors-sign ). Later in the week, and completely coincidentally, I began reading the work of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, whose name kept appearing in my research on curriculum and ethics. I’m not talking about a few citations. I mean every time, his well-placed words were used by non-theological scholars to knock their points out of the ballpark. Sometimes God knocks me over the head with stuff. Rabbi Heschel was born in Poland in 1907, to an Orthodox Jewish family. He studied philosophy at the University of Berlin while also studying for rabbinic ordination. When the Nazis took over, he was arrested by the Gestapo,

**Note: This post is a devotional written for a congregational newsletter. I'm putting it here as a repository. So if this kind of writing isn't particularly your thing, hang around, I'll be back as the reprobate soon. Psalms 27:6-7 Then my head will be exalted      above the enemies who surround me; at his sacred tent I will sacrifice   with shouts of joy;      I will sing   and make music   to the   Lord . 7  Hear my voice   when I call,   Lord ;      be merciful to me and answer me. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Prayerbook of the Bible In 1940 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an 84-page meditation on the Psalms called Prayerbook of the Bible , in which he explains the importance of the Psalms for Christian prayer. I can’t think of Psalms now without thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote concerning them, “Along these lines the Holy Scriptures tell us that the first thought and the first word of the day belong to God.” Actually, I’ve revised it a bit and say it as a prayer: “L

The blessing and curse of being an academic is that whenever I come across any really interesting "thing"--whether it is an experience, a news story, situation, work of art, or take on the human condition--my first thought is, "Wow, that would make a great paper!" I wonder if my other egghead friends do that. It isn't all bad; the blessing is that clearly there will never be a shortage of topics to write about. The curse is that everything around me becomes a potential scholarly topic. And I start planning out where to begin the search of existing literature before I finish feeling and experiencing whatever it is. A case in point is divinity school. For the first two weeks of being at Candler (School of Theology at Emory University), I felt like a researcher doing an ethnography of seminary. I still think that's a pretty doggone good idea! It took almost a month before I began to feel the experience as something other than a research project. What's so b