Rev. Dr. Jeff Garrison
Did you miss my sermon on Sunday? Well, I ran away last week. And through this week I will have limited internet. My technology dry spell continues through the weekend. Next week, I’ll be at Calvin University and Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But right now I am in a beautiful part of God’s creation, … Read more I’m traveling for a few weeks
Dave and my introduction to Blue Hole Canoes In the winter of 1976, I was a freshman at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. One night, I attended the local Sierra Club meeting. The hot topic at the time was the protection of the New River, a river I’d paddled and felt I should become … Read more Dave, Blue Hole Canoes, Bill, Bob, and a book review
Montreat I’ve been on vacation this past week, which is why I didn’t post a sermon on Sunday. Instead, I spent five days at Montreat, a Presbyterian conference and retreat center in the mountains of North Carolina. While there, I caught up with an old friend from the time when we both lived in Hickory, … Read more Catching up and two book reviews
In 2017, I spent a week in a Christian community on Iona, an island in the Scottish Inner-Hebrides. This is a description of my journey to the Island. It’s an all day trip from Edinburgh, where I’d stayed with friends. I had hope to lead a group to Iona afterwards, but the next summer, the … Read more Heading to Iona
Over New Years Eve and early January 2005, I took a group of college students from First Presbyterian Church of Hastings, Michigan to New Orleans. We helped with the relief work after Katrina. The amount of damage from that hurricane still haunts me. This is a piece I pulled up from the past, that tells … Read more Riding on the City of New Orleans
Part of this was posted in a previous blog that is no longer available. I added more information to include the entire trip and am reposting it. In late April 2018, my father, sister, and I made this trip to the Dry Tortugas, which sit 68 miles west of Key West. There are no services … Read more Four days and three nights in the Dry Tortugas
In 2013, I visited Virginia City, Nevada. I had lived there in the 1980s, when I was a student pastor at First Presbyterian Church. Before my time there, a tourist railroad had been established and was reconstructing the famed Virginia and Truckee Railroad. The big news when I was there, was the train crossing the … Read more The Ride of a Lifetime (in the cab of a steam engine)
On the evening of December 10th, a storm system produced terrible tornadoes in mid-America. The storm began in Arkansas and moved northeast into Missouri and Kentucky. By Sunday morning, when the clouds cleared and the sun rose, a destructive path, at places a mile wide and over 250 miles long, remained. 89 people dead and … Read more Rebuilding in Kentucky
I rolled over a few minutes before 5:30 AM and glanced at the sky. The stars are beginning to disappear, but bright above the eastern horizon were Jupiter and Venus, separating from their conjunction a few days earlier. Although I wasn’t planning on it, I dozed off and woke at 6 AM. Not wanting to miss … Read more A Solo Paddle to Cape Lookout
Much of this blog post had been originally published as an article in The Skinnie published in March 2018. This version has been slightly edited and altered. Easter Sunday 1982, Old Salem, North Carolina The wake-up call came at 4:30 AM Sunday morning. I am staying at a hotel right across from Old Salem in present-day Winston … Read more Easter Sunrise Services