Month: March 2010

Doyouseemenastrees? Reflections on Mark 8:22-25

(This is Part 2 of a series on our recent trip to Clinica Ezell in Montellano, Guatemala. Part 1 can be found here. The following are remarks that I delivered to the HTI Eye/Ortho Team on March 17, 2010 during evening devotional).

First off, thank you Cameron for having my back tonight. He loaned me his Bible after I forgot mine.  I didn’t want to stand up here and scroll through my Bible app on my iPhone–I thought that would look, uh, “unprofessional” (pointing to my Bama ball cap and scrubs).

I just want to clear up one more thing before I get started.… Read the rest

Dmitri, You Stop That RIGHT NOW!

Gentle Fusioneers–

If you’re trying to read the comments on my blog you may have noticed you can’t. In fact, you can’t leave one either for that matter.

You can thank Dmitri for that. He’s one of the imaginary Russians that I race toward the end of my long runs (and always beat, BTW–USA!, USA!, USA!). But in real life he’s a spammer. A good one, too.

This time he left a piece of…well, you know what he left, that apparently corrupted my database. Rest assured, your five years worth of comments are still there, careening through the interwebs, floating in the virtual ether, and as soon as I can figure out to to retrieve them, they will appear again.… Read the rest

The Road to Montellano Leads Straight Through My Heart

The road to Montellano, Guatemala started in a small, dingy-gray room on the 11th floor of Roanoke Memorial Hospital on April 2nd, 2009. It was there around 5:00 AM that I held my mother’s head in my hands and shouted words of love and farewell over her as she drew her last breath in this life.

You don’t travel into the Valley of the Shadow with someone and then back out again without being changed forever. The Reaper’s sickle passes so close to your own skin that you feel its wind. It cuts, and if you’re standing near enough, you bleed.… Read the rest

Sometimes Only a Buzzword Will Do

I literally groaned when my clerk handed me the plastic reference card to place on my houndstooth lanyard. If you work for the government or a large corporation, you know what I’m talking about.

Those lovely little laminated jewels have all the answers to every conceivable scenario or crisis. Surrounded by a 10-foot wall of flames? No problem. Just remember–“R-A-C-E” (Remove, Activate, Confine, Extinguish) and “P-A-S-S” (Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep).

Of course, by the time you fumble through them, find the right one and read it, the point is moot because now you’re soot.

“Don’t worry,” he said as he watched me reach around and rub my neck in anticipation of the extra weight. … Read the rest

Confessions Of An Old Cold Warrior

I had a very smart man, a rocket scientist in fact (we have a few in Huntsville), tell me recently that America was going to hell in a hand basket. He didn’t say it quite that way because a respectable Christian, Southern gentleman would never drop the “H” bomb in front of the ladies unless he was reading it out of the Bible. But that was the basic gist of it.

He said a lot of things, that we had strayed from the intent of the Founding Fathers to establish a “Christian Nation,” that widespread belief in evolution was the root of much of society’s evil and ills, including increasing teenage suicide rates, and that really things had grown much worse since prayer was banned in public schools.… Read the rest