Rev. Dr. Jeff Garrison
Haw River 1975 I pause, standing in the door of the gas station at the edge of Pittsboro, a Coke in one hand and a pack of peanuts in the other. Ripping open the peanuts with my teeth, I shake a few from the bag into my mouth, chasing it with a swig from the … Read more Haw River: a short memoir and a book review
The sun drops below the hills.It’s time to leave the broad waters of Laurel Forkand follow the sounds of rushing water paralleling the muddy dirt road lined with mountain laurel. Reaching Hereford Road,the mare in the pasture looks up from her hayand gaits over to the fence. I rub her head and she presses tight against my … Read more Walking up Laurel Fork Road
Barry Lopez, About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory (New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1999), 273 pages. This is a wonderful collection of essays. I listened to an abridged edition as well as read the essays. The Audible version of the book was wonderful because the late Lopez read his work. The collection (in the book … Read more About This Life
Last week, I wrote about my last day in Korea. This week, I’m resurrecting another story about that wonderful trip. I had taken a bus from Seoul to Wonju early on Sunday morning. Seung Hwan met me at the bus station. I preached to his congregation at the medical college in Wonju, then we spent … Read more The Magpie Crags
In early 2000, I spent a two weeks in Korea, preaching and visiting friends and my parents (my father’s company had assigned him to a Korean factory making power plants near Pusan). I preached at a couple of churches, one of which had nearly 2000 in attendance at one service, which is the largest congregation … Read more Leaving Korea
A Brief Personal Essay on Maps I have a love affair with maps. It started in childhood when we lived in Petersburg, Virginia for a few years. As a third grader, I studied the maps of my home area during the Civil War. A couple years later, as a Boy Scout and living near the … Read more Maps, Old and New (and a book review)
Today is Robert Burns Birthday, the poet from Scotland. It’s also Virginia Woolf’s birthday, but for some reason Burns draws more interest. It’s probably the whisky. After all, Woolf is English and who’d want to drink gin when you can have the water of life. In honor of Burns, I’m pulling this post from my … Read more Burns’ Night
Amy Peterson, Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020), 197 pages including notes. Fifteen years ago, I read Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff. Since then, I’ve read it several times and have spent considerable energy thinking about virtues. Perhaps this itch drew me to this book. In … Read more Where Goodness Still Grows
I’m in shock over this week’s events at our nation’s Capitol. If you are a praying person, will you join me praying for our country. We need to open ourselves to God, asking for insight in how what we might do as individuals and in the groups we’re a part of to being healing to … Read more My thoughts on Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol
2020 has come to an end. It was a year that we’ll not forget. Personally, it didn’t rise up to the trauma of 2016 (when I ruptured my quad-tendon, was in the hospital with sepsis following a prostate biopsy, and dealt with a tropical storm and later Hurricane Matthew), but it was still a terrible … Read more Wrapping Up 2020 (my reading summary for the year)