A frightening amount of support.

Members of the church hierarchy above me came to the parish meetings to support me as I explained why I needed to step away from ordained ministry for a while. They also came to support the churches I ministered to, responding to their fears of the future without a pastor. I had met with some [...]

Read Full Post »

The last sermon I’ve given.

I’m up here preaching almost every week, but for some of you here today it’s a surprise to see me preaching again. The bishop is here, and when the bishop comes, he gets to do the preaching. We’ve been quite fortunate to have the bishop visit us on several [...]

Read Full Post »

Waking up is hard to do.

In high school, I was on the debate team, the curling team, the choir, the vocal jazz choir, the men’s choir, the improv team and I had a small part in every school play. I was on the honour roll every year. I was in Air Cadets for at least a year in there, and [...]

Read Full Post »

Banking on prayer

I was walking a friend home from school, talking about a variety of things. I was seventeen or eighteen. She was a year or two younger. She looked at me and said, “I want to do what you do with your life. Help people who need your help.”
I was a little flattered that she saw [...]

Read Full Post »

Be Healed!

I remember, when I was about twelve, lying on the top bunk of a bunk bed, praying for my brother who slept on the bunk below. I didn’t like the sound of his rough coughing and I believed that God answered prayers and healed illnesses. I stretched out my arm toward him and silently thought [...]

Read Full Post »

In the beginning…

One of my earliest childhood memories is one that has been kept alive through repeated telling, by me and by others. When I was about six or seven, I was walking home from school and saw a dog approaching me from a distance. When I was young, I was always small for my age, not [...]

Read Full Post »

Deer, oh deer

When I was in my young twenties, I was in a long distance relationship with a young woman who lived a three and a half hour drive away from me. Maintaining this relationship required much in the way of highway driving.
One time, while I was driving home, I saw a silvery-white deer run out of [...]

Read Full Post »

Finding rock to build on

It’s Tuesday night. Any other week, and I’d be leading a prayer group. Not any more. Not for a while, anyway. Still, I’d been leading from a devotional commentary of the Gospel according to Matthew, and I’d promised the prayer group that I’d give them the book so that they could use it when I [...]

Read Full Post »

A little bit about this blog…

I’m going to be using this blog to help myself look at my life’s journey, and to share it with others. To do that, I’m going to be writing about things that happened years ago, and some that are happening now. I’ll try to give some hints as to chronology, as I won’t necessarily be [...]

Read Full Post »