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Life is a series    of letting go,       whether willingly          or with resistance,             and I get to choose. I cannot know    what comes next,       or where the road          will take me, but I can trust    that I am always and forever       held in...

One month ago today was my final worship service at Plymouth prior to retirement. I was surrounded by family and friends, and it was a powerful experience - the conclusion of 40 years of ministry. It’s only been a month but already it feels like another lifetime....

My life has been in transition for a while now (retirement, a big birthday, moving, etc). But the truth is that we are always in transition, because life is never static.  As we slowly emerge from a year and a half of pandemic shut down and upheaval, I hear lots of...

At the edge of the mountain a mama deer and her triplet offspring have been hanging out for a couple of weeks. I’ve seen them several times on my morning hikes. Today I’m standing on a ridge watching them in the field below me. Mama is munching on the grass, the...

In the past six years I have made periodic (a couple of times a year) contributions to the Religion Page of the local Helena, MT newspaper (the Helena Independent Record). This was my contribution for Saturday, June 26, 2021 - the day prior to my final sermon at...

I think of it as my mountain, but the truth is that I do not own it. In fact, it doesn’t “belong” to me at all. For the past six years I’ve simply been blessed by the privilege of sharing it with the creatures who live here. Sauntering through this sacred place has...

This is Father’s Day, and I am a father, so today is officially a day for me to celebrate. My status as a father is not based in biology. None of the women with whom I am connected in a fatherly way are biologically related to me. And, at least as far as I’m...

Today I had the privilege of participating in a graveside funeral service for Indigent and Abandoned Persons of Lewis and Clark County. Eleven individuals (ten men and one woman) were honored. Various members of the community participated, sharing readings and then...

Grief is a funny thing! Not funny in a ha-ha sort of sense, but in a peculiar sort of sense. It gets talked about as if it's linear, with stages and progression and some semblance of order. Which is, of course, nothing like what actually happens. First of all, no...

A friend’s mother just died unexpectedly, and he observed that it took several days for him to even begin to find words to start talking about it. That brought to mind my own experience just before and after Veronica died. For me, it wasn't words, but photos. There...