Category Archives: Transcendence

Playing the Silver Ball

PinballIn the late 1970s during my last couple years in my hometown of Ann Arbor, inspired by that song from the Who’s rock opera “Tommy”, I became a pinball wannabe wizard, making time each day I was on campus for my college classes to drop a few dollars worth of quarters in the slot and transcend my muggle life into the world of metal spheres, plastic flippers, bumpers, targets, spinners and those accursed ball-eating gutters. Inspired by reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine some years earlier, it was a time in my life where I was experimenting with living in the moment, at times aided by smoking marijuana, and beginning to wrestle with life at a more metaphysical level.

It was a profoundly simple and dazzling universe of exotic noises and lights highlighting the spectacular laws of kinetic physics guiding that iconic silver ball on its course (whoa… way too many adjectives!), a compelling game of skill that required a calm mind, hyper focus, extreme sensitivity and the ability to meld with the machine and bring it alive. Continue reading →

The Zen of Walking

In 1977 and 1978, as a young adult now living on my own in my hometown of Ann Arbor (my mom and dad had remarried each other and she had moved down to Ohio to live with him), I was somehow able to live almost completely in the moment, aided by the transcending joy I found walking from place to place in town. After twenty plus years of navigating these streets on foot, by bicycle or by car, I knew them so well I could head out towards my destination of the moment, let my mind totally drift with any thought so at times I barely knew exactly where I was but still managed to get where I was going, experiencing the joys of all four full seasons and continuing my exploration of the magical side to life. Continue reading →

Dandelion Wine

Reading Ray Bradbury’s book paved the way for my own encounter with, and embrace of, the magical side of life, while still not believing in god. I think I read the book over forty years ago in junior high English class, and I can hardly recall any of the details of the story, but no book I’ve read has had more impact on my life. It’s one of those cases where you encounter an idea that does not seem to impact you immediately, but seeds a thought in your mind that maybe comes to fruition at some later time, when that idea addresses a new need.

I think as a child I lived in a world of constant magic, creativity and imagination, so acknowledging a magical side of life was not an issue… there was just life and it was what it was… and for me that included being magical. Now looking back, I acknowledge the context of circumstances, the privilege of being a white male growing up in a progressive, middle-class community in America. I also acknowledge the proactive effort of my parents to raise me “outside the box” and dedicate time and money (given their modest means) to create an enriched environment for me to bloom within and explore life’s enchantment. Continue reading →

Secular Humanism

I got my ethical foundations from my family but also from the secular humanist university milieu I grew up in without a hint of religion or god in that context. During the Cuban Missile Crisis I wrestled with the possibility of nuclear war, my own mortality, and was I destined to go to hell if there was a god which I was not believing in. For me, that concern did not change the “facts on the ground”, in the sky, in the heart, or in the laughs of children, where other people might feel the presence of a deity. Continue reading →

Duck & Cover, Heaven & Hell

I was in fourth grade in 1963 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when there was apparently a real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Somewhere in that timeframe I became aware of this possibility, probably as a result of TV news coverage and a couple “Duck & Cover” exercises led by my teacher in my elementary school classroom. For those of you too young to remember these exercises, you were spared a fearful experience of powerlessness and contemplation of the abyss. For me, it was my first confrontation with my own mortality, possibilities for an afterlife and the existence of god. Continue reading →

What Molly Has and Has Not

Me and Molly at my 5th birthday party
Me and Molly at my 5th birthday party
Molly was the “girl next door” (actually across the street) in my life and, most significantly, my best friend from age three to seven. At the time I did not understand how important this relationship would be to me in shaping my adult life, even though I saw Molly only once after age eleven. As a parent, I have also seen how my son Eric benefited from a similar relationship with a girl who lived across the street and became his best friend for several years.

Molly and I were comrades of the soul. We played pretend astronauts and soldiers and created innumerable adventures together. We always had the spot next to each other at each other’s birthday parties, no matter how many other kids were there. There was nothing that divided us. Continue reading →