A seminary summer in Clinical Pastoral Education was at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. In three months, I encountered more situations than in three years of ministry. My peers and I received supervised reflection on our pastoral care that helped us mature three years in three months. One encounter was not with a patient but…

I love to hear stories about how people met a significant person in their lives. Today I’ll share mine. A few months after moving to the church I’d serve for 24 years, I was asked by Susan and John to officiate their wedding. I met with them for several sessions of pre-marital counseling — mostly…

I was sixteen when I saw the movie “The Way We Were”. One scene has stayed with me for 50 years. Hubbell Gardiner’s college professor praises and reads his essay to the class. It was entitled “The All-American Smile.” Maybe the scene was the beginning of a life-long dream to have anyone appreciate my writing…