Small Stories of a Big God
With Thanksgiving and Lots of Prayer
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Philippians 4:6 It was a master plan. Everything had been timed perfectly. We had even made a dry run the day before, calculating...
Press Pause
Selah (Hebrew: סֶלָה, also transliterated as selāh) is a word used 74 times in the Hebrew Bible – 71 times in the Psalms and three times in Habakkuk – and is a difficult concept to translate. It is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the...
Higgins Beach Revisited
Fifty years. I was standing on the small strip of wet sand that had been almost completely swallowed up by the full moon high tide and I was trying to remember. And then it occurred to me it had been fifty years. I was seven years old the last time I played in the...
An Irish Take-Away (or What I Learned From People I Wanted To Teach)
From the hill where I stood looking down at the small city of Cohb, Ireland (pronounced Cove) I could just make out the harbor and the sea, which was a light green, spattered with a few small boats. It was Irish weather; a fine mist gave the colorful town an opaque...
The Incredible Invisible Shrinking Ama
“Ama, are you shrinking?” The question was posed by my five year old granddaughter, and it made me stumble a bit at first. Could you tell? Was it THAT noticeable? When I mentioned our conversation to my son, he tried to comfort me by saying that she had been asking...
What Matters Most
August 11th marks the two year anniversary of this website and the very first blog I ever wrote. I still think “blogging” is a strange exercise of 21st century mankind, but it’s grown on me. A couple of years later, it’s become a routine. A writer friend of mine...
Meeting Bo
I’m still not sure why Bo and I met. I’ve learned to not question God, or at least not to require an explanation. Sometimes answers, or the way we see it, can ruin the beautiful mystery of heaven touching earth. But before I had a chance to meet Bo, my car had to meet...
My Other Life
*****Guest blogger and big brother Bob Gulian agreed to help me out this week. He's been doing that (helping me out ) for many, many years. If you read the last blog about my six week stay in a nuthouse, I failed to mention that this guy drove through midtown...
A Picture Story
The loose stack of pictures slid from my Bible as I opened it and cascaded towards the floor, fanning out in an array of color. I quickly grabbed at them before they slid out of reach, careful to not bend them. I laughed to myself because this has happened before,...
Agree with the One You Don’t Agree With
Agree with your adversary quickly… Matthew 5:25 Notice Jesus doesn’t say, “Make your adversary agree with you” or “Try to work things out”. He simply tells us to do something oppositional. Agree and adversary. They don’t belong together. Oh, and make it fast....
Reflections of a Father’s Love
It was clearly a man’s world, the hardware store in downtown Old Greenwich. And I felt part honored and part trespasser when I followed my dad through the door . It was Saturday morning, part of a ritual my dad kept, probably to keep himself grounded after a week of...
Ada’s and the Five Dollar Heist
In hindsight, it was a creepy hiding place, and not my favorite one at all; just a small cement room built under our back porch. It was probably meant only for firewood and maybe coal; a perfect home for spiders and mice, with a small door accessible through the back...
The People of God
“Jesus, it’s so crazy following you ,” I thought as I gazed out of the airplane window onto the brown and green patchwork of upstate New York farmland. To my far right I could see a huge expanse of water; one of the great lakes, I guessed. I smiled in mixed wonder and...
Happy Mother At Last Day
I heard the text ringing through as I was at work on Sunday. I could see it was from Bob, my brother and that there was a picture attached. I quickly opened it and smiled. There was my mom, obviously outside with Bob on a beautiful spring day, and clenched in her hand...
Fear No Evil
Crowds cheered. Celebratory fireworks went off, hundreds marched down Commonwealth Ave. singing “USA” and “Sweet Caroline.” In the distance, church bells triumphantly rang out. Cars honked and teenagers waved American flags. The mayor tweeted, “We got him!” What was...
Edisto or What I Tried To Do On My Vacation
The Murray clan of Scotland left their native land in the 1700’s, fleeing political and religious persecution. No, that’s not it. The Murrays left Scotland in the 1700’s, braving the tempestuous Atlantic for the lure of wealth and treasure in the new land of America....
True Love 101
But what does love look like? It was the unmistakable voice of God, the press of the words gentle but firm. What does it look like? It seemed enough that I had forgiven the six men responsible for my son’s murder. I said it and meant it, and it was even printed in the...
The Cross or What’s So Good About Good Friday?
March is beautiful somewhere. But not here. I’ve always been a big defender of the month nobody loves because I was born right near the end of it. Hence the name, Robin, as in “first sign of spring”, although with global warming the robins have become confused and...
Void Where Prohibited or Urine Big Trouble: How to Use a Plastic Urinal
*****Guest Blogger and good friend T. Mark Bartley has graciously offered to share some of his deep insights into the problem of pain, suffering and how to use a urinal. Thanks Mark! Henry David Thoreau said "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the...
The Gift
The Gift 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 The Message (MSG) Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down;...
The Visit
Jermaine was running late. He had forgotten his wallet and had to backtrack. I sat in the prison parking lot and weighed my options. It was cold out, and I was nervous. Sitting in my car looking at my phone would be a poor way to kill time. I watched as yet another...
Finding Shelter
It’s freezing out. Literally, things are freezing by the minute, like car doors and the cat’s water dish and I’m sitting in the comfort of my dining room watching the birds and squirrels partying at the feeders, relieved I filled them yesterday. It was so beautiful...
Body Blast
It was something I swore I would never do again. Hadn’t I learned my lesson? The money spent, the time wasted. Yet here I am again… at the gym. A gym is a good meter for facing your age squarely. It takes some courage to honestly assess your physical demerits. I am...
Draw Near
I still remember the little nativity figures crowded together in the cardboard barn. What a strange mishmash of people, and animals too! After I got big, my mother told me they were nothing special, my parents bought the set at Woolworth’s, but to me they were like...
Alarm Fatigue
Alarm fatigue. It’s a new phrase that is catching on in the news recently and in nursing journals. If you work in a hospital, you don’t need a definition, you are just nodding your head, Uh-huh. In the 20 years I’ve worked in hospitals alarms have taken off, so that...