BLOG 6/7/23 I’m Not Special I said that to a very dear friend after she surprised me with a most wonderful gift. I was so stunned that what I really thought came out of my mouth and I feel ashamed. It was a few days ago and I knew I needed to write about it…

It has been a wild eight months. Today I am in Idaho. So many stories. I think about the future a lot lately. And I think about the cross and what I can do now or not do. In Idaho there are many churches but I have seen two or three this week with an…

I read this recently in ‘Our Daily Bread’ on 2 Cor 4:16-5:5. I will not repeat what the author, Arthur Jackson, has so brilliantly written but as a mature person I can feel like a ‘tired tent’. I was so happy to learn that I had not fractured any bones in a fall that took…

Yesterday I saw a friend I met 50 years ago for the first time in 30 years. In catching up I observed that there are too many stories so stick to the most powerful. So, when I was chasing a rabbit down a sad trail my friend interrupted me with, “So, what about the future?”…

THE NEW FAMILIAR by embracing the unfamiliar I have been home one week and am still looking for the toaster. I had emptied some rooms to make space for a friend and it will take time to put my home back together. I did hang two pictures exactly where they had been last year. Then…

I’m writing this from an airport hotel that is actually nice. I was just hoping for clean because of my nasty Rome experience. I got used to it then yesterday they moved me downstairs on the street next to a laundry shop that had a variety of characters coming and going at crazy hours. It…

I have liked cannoli for a decade but I have loved God longer. I once purchased cannoli forms and know the ingredients but the outcome was disappointing. In Roma you might expect the cannoli to be the best but after one try I am over it. That is the amazing difference with God. The more…

I have walked past Billy’s Tacos in Rome at least a dozen times and there is never a customer. As a business person, who has depended on people liking my skills, I have felt sorry for this owner but not sorry enough to visit. Compassion and empathy should be balanced with good judgement but the…

I was created in God’s image. Gen 1:26-27, “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the…

Let me start by saying that today had many “bests”. The Van Gogh exhibit at the Palazzo Bonaparte was remarkable. I did not know that Van Gogh’s dad was a pastor and Vincent was a missionary to the miners in the north. His family went to get him when Vincent gave everything he owned to…