Prodigious pianist, teenager Micah McLaurin, is being celebrated in local classical music circles these days, having been awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

In recent years Micah has competed successfully in prominent international piano competitions and performed with various symphonies world-wide, including the Cleveland Orchestra, where he played the famously difficult Chopin Concerto No. 2.

I first met Micah as a youngster. The church I pastored at the time housed Trinity Montessori School which Micah attended. I was working in my office one morning when I heard someone playing piano in so accomplished a way, beyond anything I’d ever heard before in a church fellowship hall. So I went to find out who it could be.

And there he was, this little kid, playing such difficult and demanding classical music.

I later invited Micah to play for a church service, where he wowed the congregation. And as I subsequently observed Micah around the school, I found him to be a well-rounded child, comfortable, natural, unpretentious and age-appropriate with his school peers, including his several siblings, the children of David and Karen McLaurin.

I learned that the McLaurins and their colorful brood–each accomplished in their own right–were devout Roman Catholics. That’s when I set about trying to arrange for Micah to play for the Abbott at Mepkin Abbey, the Trappist Monastery near Charleston.

Over the years I’ve developed close friendships with the Mepkin community, including the late Abbott, Francis Kline–himself, a world-class organist/pianist who was quite a celebrity in the Charleston arts community. Not unlike Micah McLaurin, Francis had been a similar musical prodigy as a child growing up in Philadelphia.

I was once recovering from surgery and Father Kline paid a pastoral call on me and my wife, Jackie, at our home–not something typically associated with the ministry of a monk–and when he asked if there was anything he could do for me, I said I would love for him to play the piano sitting in our living room. Which he graciously did. It was as if I had asked him to pray.

I couldn’t imagine anything delighting the Abbott more than hearing the young Micah McLaurin play the piano. Nor, for that matter, an experience more meaningful for Micah and his Catholic family than for them to meet Francis.

Except, tragically, Abbot Kline had become seriously ill with lukemia, only to die of that dreaded disease in 2006 at age 58. So I was told, by another monk and friend as well–when I called to inquire if Francis were “up to” meeting the McLaurins and hearing Micah play–that the Abbott, regretfully, was simply too ill for such an occasion to occur.

I was at Mepkin recently for a choral concert in the monastery chapel and visited the simple grave nearby where Father Kline is buried. I, along with countless others, continue to mourn the untimely death of my friend, Francis Kline. These days, when I’m in my office engaged in pastoral counseling, I see his picture which sits on a nearby bookcase shelf.

I regret Father Kline not getting to meet Micah McLaurin and hear him play. I’m sure Micah would have reminded Francis of himself when he was, as a youngster, quite as accomplished a musician and just as thoroughly and beautifully human.

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On a lighter note, I recently received a periodic newsletter from Kanuga, the Episcopal Camp and Conference Center located near Hendersonville, North Carolina. And among the list of names of persons for whom gifts had been contributed to Kanuga in their honor or memory, one of the memorial gifts was for a woman whose first name was–are you ready for this?

Narcissa!

One hardly needs to be a mental health professional to know that “narcissism” (or “narcissist,” the nouns; “narcissistic” being the adjective) is a term which generally carries with it a fairly pejorative connotation.

Most people don’t like “narcissists”–at least nearly as much as “narcissists” appear to be rather pathologically “in love” with themselves.

“Narcissus” is, of course, the name of the handsome mythological youth who became so enamored with the reflection of himself in a pool that he fell into the water and was drowned.

Today, “narcissism” typically refers to a “personality disorder,” defined on page 327 in my new copy of the DSM 5 (302.81) as someone who exhibits (some combination of) the following:

1) a grandiose sense of self-importance; 2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, etc.; 3) believes that s/he is “special” and unique; 4) requires excessive admiration; 5) has a sense of entitlement; 6) is interpersonally exploitative; 7) lacks empathy; 8) is envious of others in proportion to one’s own impression that others are envious of her/himself; 9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Not that many of us–since “mental (emotional, moral, spiritual, social) health” is always relative–aren’t capable of exhibiting certain of these characteristics. Indeed, where what one would likely consider  “healthy self-confidence” deteriorates into certain “narcissistic” traits–this involves a fairly sophisticated level of clinical discernment.

Just as persons with notably “low self-esteem” often consider, in a “projective” way, others with a “healthier self-concept” as being “narcissistic.” For if the term may be an appropriate clinical assessment, it can also be used to judge, condemn and/or  “fight with.”

Still–who would name a little girl “Narcissa”? Or, for that matter, who would contribute a “memorial gift” to the Kanuga Camp and Conference Center in the name of such a person?

Unless–as my Webster’s New World (Pocket) Dictionary, not to mention Wikipedia reveal–“narcissus” is also a species of flowers, including the lovely daffodil and jonquil.

Ooops! So that’s what they meant–the woman’s parents–when they named her “Narcissa”: a beautiful flower. Sometimes being a “psychopest” can lead one astray–in this case, me–when trying to understand what is right and good, much less best about whomever.

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I found something in church recently, something I wouldn’t usually pay attention to. But because of what I’ve been doing most of my adult life, it touched me rather deeply.

On a “Prayer Request Form” in a pew rack before me, a youngster–it was the printing of an elementary-school-aged-child–to the question, “Person’s name to be prayed for,” s/he had written: “My daddy.” Followed by her/his response to the “Nature of request,” where “No more homework” was written.

Would it have been a girl who would call her dad “daddy”; a boy, who would call his daddy “dad”? Perhaps . . .

And, of course, what I’ve just described could have been a kid “praying” for “less homework” for her/himself; “homework” that may have been supervised by her/his demanding father.

However, I’ve been teaching non-traditional students in college and graduate school for many years–“working adults,” as we say–going to night school and on the weekends. Or these days, students tethered to a computer, taking courses online. Students who also have commitments, besides their studies, to not only their full-time (or more than one) job, but also usually to their families as well–including children.

Given those demands, it is often “family” that tends to “come in last” on an over-working adult’s list of priorities. As in, perhaps, the circumstances of the little kid I imagine writing on a “Prayer Request Form” at church; praying for her/his father to finally “get out of school”–i.e. have “no more homework”–so he can be more available to his family, including his child’s need for an engaged, involved, attentive “daddy.”