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

Yesterday I was reminded by two different folks of my blog, which is the first item put on hold when life gets really busy. Blog writing--reflective essays, really--is my favorite kind of writing, and I always mean to do better about not neglecting it. If I could do this for a living, I believe I would. So here's something for today. When I opened the page to start an entry, I found the following two paragraphs that I had begun last year. Let me tell you, I was in a really different place then than I am now, so it is not the same entry I would do today. Still, as I read it, I thought it was important to show the contrast and reflect on that for a minute. The original title was Minding Mortality. I felt like that needed to change too, so I changed it slightly as you can see. One unexpected realization of practicing mindfulness has been that I am more mindful now of my own mortality. That's probably due to my coming to the practice at this particular age; I'm fifty-f...

Prompt from Mindfulness: A Journal (Price, 2016) Make a list of ten everyday activities that you find relaxing or soothing--even those as small as calling a friend or making a cup of your favorite tea. Try it! Do one of the activities on your list and write about your experience.  The List, in no particular order: 1. read--theology, queer theology, JFK assassination theories 2. watch television--documentaries, period pieces, docu-dramas, biographies 3. having my afternoon cup of espresso made with my luxury-item coffee maker 4. playing piano 5. tidying up 6. singing 7. listening to music, which kind of music depends on my mood 8. reverie, including porch time with close friends 9. meditating with my Calm app I realize this is probably a sad little list for many people. I can't even think of a last item offhand. But I think my simple list hints at my capacity for finding joy in the simplest of experiences, noticing a blue bird, for example. This capacity, in turn, poi...

I don't blog as much as I would like, so when I return to this site, I read the last post I've written. I did that today and thought it wasn't half bad. I remember writing it, I had intended it to mark the beginning of my commitment toward mindfulness.  That was April; this is January. I feel like I've failed at it miserably. I get anxious and angry. I get dejected and forget to meditate. I don't follow through well on activities, such as this one, that are good for me and make me happy. One of the tenets of mindfulness training is that practicing is succeeding. There is no failure, and so you should be gentle with yourself, compassionate to yourself, when you don't meet your own expectation. That's a hard one for me. In a weird way, when I'm disappointed in myself, rather than letting negative thoughts go and moving on, I run the script of--whatever it is--an argument, an embarrassing moment, a disappointment of some sort, over and over in my head. I ...

There's a line in the Indigo Girls song Watershed that goes, Every five years or so I look back on my life, and I have a good laugh . Absolutely worth pausing to enjoy: https://youtu.be/mut_T0GcehI The line reminds me of a therapy session I had a little less than a decade ago. I'm a firm believer in therapy. Every few years or so I look at my life, and decide that a little more therapy wouldn’t hurt. Anyway, after hearing me narrate my stories and give account of my life as I understood it, the therapist paused and suggested, Well,  you might ask yourself two questions: 1. what do you want? and 2. what do you need? Since then I've come to call these the two existential questions. Because when I come to crossroads in my life—when I take an assessment of it—I come back to these questions. Every time—what do I want, and what do I need. Considering them helps me clear away the clutter. And often, I find that clearing away the clutter, all the superfluous options, the ...

My paper at the 2017 South Eastern Women's Studies (SEWSA) Conference is Intentional Monogamy in the Age of Tinder: Queer Theology and Re-thinking Christian Sexual Ethics . That one title contains at least four ideas for an academic paper~~and here in one place I'm going to try to pull them together to look again at a concept that we take so much for granted we do it without thinking. Monogamy. I've begun framing my academic research over the last four years with theology; I even did a stint at the Candler School of Theology at Emory. For example, I believe that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's notion of ethics and existentialist theologian Paul Tillich's conceptualization of God and "the" Christ are not just relevant our world today, they are essential. They are my starting point; from them I move to Feminist Theology and Queer Theology, which are topics for another day. Just know that theology~as I define it the search for the nature of God~in its various persp...

Sarah and I have recently taken to binge watching The West Wing . She'd never seen the entire series; I had, but after this presidential election, I wanted to watch it again. That doesn't really capture it. I felt compelled to watch it again. Even during the presidential debates, I started getting the feeling that in some way reality was slipping away from me and my country. Here was the heir apparent, the presumptive winner of the whole shebang, Hillary Clinton. She looked like a president; she talked like a president; she had all the experience and credentials one (well, a democrat one) would expect and hope for in a president. She appeared in debates with Nondescript White Guy and Bernie Sanders, a socialist senator from Vermont. A socialist senator from Vermont???  But, Bernie kept her--and us--honest.  I never for one minute thought he was electable, but we need politicians like Bernie Sanders to influence the Democrat platform toward equity and access. On the Republic...

You make your plans, and God laughs. That's what happened to me over the weekend. Let me go back, though, and start with discovering the Atlanta Freedom Bands, which I wrote about here in November 2014. I recollected how finding the band made me realize how much I had missed making music, marching in parades, performing in concerts. How after more than 30 years, finding the AFB was like discovering a new, yet long lost treasure. Last year, I marched my first season of parades in various Atlanta community festivals. It was wondrous. And at Christmas, I performed in my first concert playing French Horn in 35 years. Last Saturday morning, I marched mellophone with the AFB in the Atlanta St. Patrick's Day parade. Afterwards, members of the band had lunch and drinks and fellowship at a local restaurant, which is the custom with this group. Saturday night, kept waking up with what felt like a neck cramp. When I woke up early Sunday my speech was slurred, which I chalk up to needing...

On X-Men and Orlando I've been making my family watch a lot of X-men movies this week, as a kind of research project for the new X-Men: Apocalypse . One of the themes throughout all the movies is good versus evil (another theme, especially in X-Men: The Last Stand , is marginalization of people because of their mutation--a clear parallel to homophobia and reparative therapy often forced upon LGB people--but that is another story...). For example, there are good mutants and evil mutants, good humans and evil humans. Sometimes, the evil forces come out on top. But sometimes, Professor X, Charles Xavier, gets through to them. "Don't do this," he persuades telepathically. " It isn't who you are ." Occasionally, he gets through, even to Magneto. Evil is among us. Whatever prompts us to reject our ethical thinking toward one another by supporting unregulated weapons purchases, or failing to commit meaningful resources to domestic violence and mental illness, o...

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 Gest...