Category: The world through which we travel-Relationsip with Creation and the Universe
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What Song Shaped Your Soul?
Growing up in church, I learned the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As a little boy, however, the words Holy Ghost frightened me. My older brothers and sisters loved to tell ghost stories, and I was the perfect audience. I was terrified. So whenever I heard people talk about the Holy Ghost in…
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Some Places Become Holy Simply Because We Lived There
We all feel disconnected at times. I never met my maternal or paternal grandparents. They had all died before I was born, so I grew up knowing very little about my family’s story. In the 1990s, my oldest sister, Sue, and I began researching our genealogy. The deeper we dug, the more I discovered that…
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What Song Shaped Your Soul?
There are so many songs about love. Recently, someone suggested I listen to “Love Is a Decision” by Harlan Hayes. The opening line caught my attention: “Love is not always about butterflies.” The song goes on to say that love is choosing the name of the person you love every single day. That simple thought…
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Some Places Become Holy Simply Because We Live There
In 2003, I was appointed by the Hattiesburg District Superintendent of the Mississippi Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church to serve as pastor of West Laurel United Methodist Church in Laurel, Mississippi. The appointment felt like coming home. My mother and father were both raised in east Jones County. When I was twelve, our…
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Places That Shape Us: Where History Became Personal
Today our nation marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, the birth of what became the United States of America. Over the years, I have traveled through 46 of the continental United States. Only Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota remain unseen. Every state has offered something worth…
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Five Songs for a Curious Pilgrim
Music That Has Helped Me Keep Walking Music has a way of reaching places that sermons and books sometimes cannot. A song can find us in our loneliness, remind us of God’s presence, and give us hope when the road ahead seems uncertain. As I reflected on Jesus’ words, “Stand up and raise your heads,…
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“Farther Along: Living in the Sunshine We Do Not Yet Understand”
Reflections from a Curious Pilgrim “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”— John 13:7 “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully…”— 1 Corinthians 13:12 🌾 A Memory…
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🌿 The Older I Get: Becoming Whole in a Fragmented World
There are some songs that entertain us.Some that stir memories.And then there are songs that quietly sit beside us and say, “This… this is what life is really about.” “The Older I Get” by Alan Jackson is one of those songs. It doesn’t shout.It doesn’t preach.It simply reflects. And in that reflection, it reveals something…
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🌿 The Fine Line, The Narrow Way, and the Fruit We Bear
A Curious Pilgrim Reflection on the Life We Are Choosing 🎵 Listening for Truth in Unexpected Places There are moments when truth comes to us not only through Scripture, but through a song, a memory, or a quiet stirring within. When Wayne Watson sings about “The Fine Line,” I hear the reality that life is…
The Curious Pilgrim 