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Posts tagged ‘parenting’

Apr 26

Regarding Prince

One of my favorite Durham memories is of the 2011 Prince vs. Michael Jackson dance party on 9th Street.  People who had danced to their music as adults in the 1980s were dancing with strangers who were born in the 1980s.  It was a spectacle of sheer, shared joy.  We “went crazy,” forgetting for an evening ways that Durhamites are divided from and taught to fear one another.

I was 16 when Purple Rain came to the theater in San Angelo, Texas.  I am pretty sure I went to see it with a close friend from church and her sister.  It was cheesy in just the right way, and Prince was the most beautiful person I had ever seen on the big screen.  I had a crush on Han Solo when I was little, and I loved David Lee Roth’s devil-may-care ways on MTV.  But Prince was a different universe of sexy.  He conveyed in his music an unselfconscious joy-in-common that suggested to my 16-year-old virgin self an inkling of what sexual intimacy should optimally be.   Read more

Jun 16

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Fight for your Right to Daaaaadddyyy! The Art of Fatherhood, MCA, and Wild Things

This Father’s Day, we celebrate my Dad’s retirement from 47 years of ministry in the United Methodist Church.  He has been the spiritual abba for three generations of children, from Sparrowbush, New York to Rhome, Texas.  A few days ago, a room full of Methodist clergy in the Southwest Texas voted to allow him to retire. (Methodists vote on everything.)

At the same meeting, we held a group of brand new clergy to a set of rules that are just plain odd.  (The questions Methodist pastors have to answer about “being made perfect” are strange enough for a post all their own.)  For this post, I want to note that the Methodist rules contain at least two promises not to “trifle,” and several promises to perform “diligence.”  My bishop’s favorite rule is “Will you diligently instruct the children in every place?”  He asks this of the candidates each year with notable verve.  John Wesley was all about diligence, and he had no patience for anything that whiffed of trifle.  I think he was off the mark, because good fathers, and good pastors, have to learn to waste serious time if they are going to instruct children.

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