• THE HUNGER GAMES: Thank You for your consideration.

    For some reason facebook decided that my 7 pages of art, cooking & spiritual formation seemed unconnected. They thought that my Page Manager App perhaps wasn’t really run by one person. How indeed, could one person have so many varied interests? How could they find all the ordinary aspects of this life relating to faith?…


  • WALKING INTO LIFE

    I went walking Thursday night with the Spa City Pacers in our downtown area. The humidity was high and the evening breezes of a few weeks ago were’t stirring any longer. My ice melted in my carry cup before we left the old train depot. I’ve signed up for the HOT SPRINGS 5K FUN WALK.…


  • OPEN WOUNDS AND LOOSE BINDINGS

    Sometimes we bind our wounds with bandages that don’t quite cover the scars. Then these scrapes and cuts don’t heal properly, but stay open and never mend. The doctors among us may be concerned that these wounds are sites for a new infection, but the healers know that suchwounds are given to us for the…


  • MY ACCIDENTAL VACATION

    Everyone should take at least one accidental vacation, at least once in their life. This event will throw you off your game plan, sweep away your plan B, and leave you up a creek without a paddle. This is your Kobayashi Maru, your Waterloo, and your Little Big Horn all rolled up into one. Most…


  • WOUNDS, HEALING AND LOVE: THE MYSTERY OF THE JOURNEY

    At dinner Friday night with some friends, I met a lady from their church. I remarked that I needed to find something on the Mexican restaurant’s menu that wouldn’t damage my wellness plan. I’ve been pre-diabetic for eight years now, but I’ve managed my condition with diet and exercise. I even have a Fitbit exercise…


  • THE HOLY NODE AND THE FOUND BUTTERFLY

    I’m not a fast walker, for my first goal in walking isn’t to break any record for my usual 1.5 mile jaunt around Mercy Hospital here in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Neither do I stroll, for Bon Jovi and the Boss sing a strong striding cadence in my ear. I can manage the hills better in…


  • TO LIVE IN A WATERED GARDEN!

    The various named storms of this winter season are piling up like the laundry in my baskets, but the cold weather and the bad roads are keeping me inside and away from the commercial laundromat that I frequent. Since when did we start naming winter storms like summer hurricanes anyway? I must have been asleep,…


  • Are we the Good Shepherd or Are We the Lost Sheep?

    Recently a male acquaintance of mine had the temerity to suggest that perhaps I might need one of those buttons that calls for help to a distant monitoring site. I had told him I’d been sick and he knew I lived alone. I was feeling much better by then and retorted, “As long as I…


  • Time and Eternity: Standing Still While the World Rushes By

    Greetings at the transition of the old year and the beginning of the new year. I took a long break from my weekly journal to participate in the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it’s so fondly called. The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. I didn’t make it, but I didn’t join…


  • A WORK IN PROGRESS: Grieving Enabled Through the Creative Process

    Just the other day, one of our younger clergy brothers died from a massive heart attack in the wee early morning hours, or late at night during his sleep, depending on your point of view. His contemporaries were in a state of shock, as well they might be, for if death could take a strapping…