by Greg | Mar 23, 2016 | Blog Posts, Uncategorized
My parish has changed, which means I have traded pulpits so to speak, and now walk alongside persons with developmental disabilities and their families. On a recent visit to a home where four men and staff members live, I was joined with my wife and a friend of ours. I wanted to show off this house filled with men full of smiles and love and hope. To be greeted with uninhibited enthusiasm and embraces of welcome is a beautiful gift of hospitality that is good for both the heart and soul. One of the residents, Al (not his real name), was eager to show us around his house and especially his room. For the most part Al’s room is just like any other bedroom among the many houses our organization supports: the wall was decorated with snapshots of visits to parks, sporting events, and family and friends; there were posters of athletes and teams that were his favorites; and on his bulletin board he had proudly tacked up and displayed medals from his years of participating with Special Olympics. Lined up along Al’s bureau were several bird houses he had painted. As he was proudly showing off the bird houses, and we were remarking how beautiful they all were, Al picked one up, thrusted into the hands of my friend and said, “Here, this is yours.” Of course my friend was overwhelmed at the gesture, but tried to say, “No, that is not necessary, this is too generous”, etc. But he was insistent. We all made quick glances at the residential host, who nodded that it was okay,...
by Greg | Mar 16, 2016 | Blog Posts, Uncategorized
Not so long ago Amy and I slipped away for a few days to go camping in the Smoky Mountains. The trees were still stark and bare, which hold their own kind of beauty. Although we had intermittent rain, we also tromped around in some snow while hiking. We love the mountains even though we did not grow up in the mountains. We both hail from Middle Georgia environs surrounded by gentle, rolling hills where the closest thing to a mountain was a fire-ant mound. Yet each time we return and lose ourselves “up there in the hills” huddling around a campfire we feel a certain re-connection with our past. Many of Amy’s best childhood memories are of family camping trips. My grandparents rarely left the dairy, but the two or so times I remember them traveling away from cows and kin, it was to head to the mountains. One time it included taking my brothers, sister and me to see those mountains for the first time. Every time we are up in mountain territory – in a tent, on a trail, a hotel room, or just riding along the winding highway – we feel a reconnection, a belonging as if we have always been there. Deep within every one of us is the need to belong. Young children take pride in belonging to their parents; adolescents carve out new identities and belong to their friends; emerging into adulthood there is the need to belong to independent ideas and convictions; and it is not uncommon that as we grow older and age we seek out our past recovering what...
by Greg | Feb 17, 2016 | Blog Posts, Uncategorized
First Week of Lent 2016 Out hiking on a trail, I have encountered a few surprises over the years. Deer, snakes, skunks and elk live in the woods, so I do not know why I should be surprised whenever I see them in their home. Several years ago I was quite a few miles into a day hike on a mountain trail when I became disconcerted and not a little bit disturbed by an unpleasant odor of what I assumed was a bear. As I was running through my mental list of “what to do when you encounter a bear in the woods,” I realized that the bear smell was me! Recently, I was out hiking with a friend (if you are going to encounter a bear it is good to have a friend, preferably one who is slower than you). We were deep in conversation when we rounded a wooded corner, and there to the side of the trail was a beat-up, rusted out old car. Trees were growing around it, indicating it had been there for quite a few years. In fact, outside of the narrow walking trail, there was no other sign of a road. It was as if the heavens opened and placed this old car alongside the trail. I suppose someone decades ago ran out of gas, or maybe had a flat, or simply blew the motor, and just parked it. Broken down, rusted out, and discarded. This happens to people too. Someone ceases to be useful and gets “parked” or discarded or forgotten. It happens to the elderly, to the disabled, to the...
by Greg | Feb 3, 2016 | Blog Posts, Uncategorized
There is a park alongside the river that is a convenient place for me to stop on the way home from work. While traffic hums by, there are trails winding through patches of woods, greenspace and the river itself that makes it ideal for jogging (or in my case lumbering). Just the other day as I was huffing and puffing and wondering if I was burning enough calories for a well-deserved desert, I noticed that most everyone I met along the trail was smiling at me. Some smiles are suspicious; other smiles have a hint of ridicule. But these smiles seemed genuine, happy. “Gee, there sure are a lot of nice people around here.” Everyone knows that joggers usually do not smile. And then it occurred to me: I was wearing my “smiley” shirt, but not just any smiley shirt. This shirt had the mud-splattered smiley face inspired by the fictionalized account from the movie “Forrest Gump.” They are smiling at me, but more specifically they are smiling at my shirt. I attempted to live up to my good natured shirt and smile back! Living up to the smile. Sometimes smiles are fake, and most of us know one when we see one. Sometimes smiles are just a feeble attempt to cover up melancholy. I never like it when someone tells me, “Smile!” especially when I just do not feel like smiling. Yet there are times when I think we are far too guarded with our smiles, as if a smile makes us vulnerable or appear weak or indolent. It is true that I sometimes smile a bit too...
by Greg | Jan 27, 2016 | Blog Posts, Uncategorized
That’s what has occupied most of my thoughts of late … a place to call home. Over the years Amy and I have been pretty good at nesting for ourselves places to call home – even when we knew our stay would be temporary. Our first “home” was a tiny garage apartment in Rome, Georgia. Whenever our landlady would crank her ’72 Buick, the roar of the motor would shake books off of our shelves. Our next home was our seminary apartment. It was an efficiency unit which meant that you could place your hand in every room in the apartment while seated at the kitchen table. We loved our apartments, even though through youthful eyes we longed for something more, something better. Since seminary we have lived in two very fine parsonages that we have called home. We have lived in temporary homes (indeed, aren’t all homes temporary?) for months at a time until we could find something more permanent. Last week, after living for three months out of suitcases, we moved to Roswell, Georgia and into a place we call home. Now I work alongside others who, in part, seek to provide a home for those who are often most vulnerable at not finding a place. The work of Developmental Disabilities Ministries can be summed up in its byline: Hope Lives Here. Everyone should have a place that they can call home. Each time I hug a neck or share a few words with these special friends I am so grateful they too feel the welcome and the hope of home. Home is much more than a...
by Greg | Jan 13, 2016 | Blog Posts, Uncategorized
Entering into the infancy of this new year, I am reflecting over all the changes I have experienced in the span of just a few short months. Through a period of prayerful discernment and many miles walked with my wife in the evenings as she patiently listened to me talk it out, I accepted a new position and in many ways a new calling that would involve us relocating. Just as homes were being decorated for the fall, our home of ten years was sold, and soon we were scrambling to pack our things away and live in temporary quarters. As others were packing away Christmas decorations, we were once again zipping up suitcases and moving away from church and children to start a new life and work. We have enjoyed the company and rekindling of old friendships, and have cherished revisiting familiar places, but still everything is so new, so uncertain. I am still learning names and responsibilities of my colleagues at Developmental Disabilities Ministries. I have yet to visit all of the wonderful homes populated by our friends who live there and are loved there. Even now as I write this article I am still not settled. There is a house to close on so that we can claim it as our own (along with the bank that was so kind to loan us the necessary funds); and all our worldly goods are still packed up on the back of a truck waited to be unloaded. It is indeed an uncertain life. And so it is for all of us, even those convinced that what they have...
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