The Flatpicking Pilgrim's Progress
Stories and tales from a guitar-picking writer, theologian, speaker, blogger and entertainer. From small town quirks to the bizarre realities of family, whacky church life and slightly damaged kinfolk, insights from a reluctant son of the South takes you along. Never know where it’ll end up but it’s sure to be worth the trip.
Episodes
69 episodes
Straight Talk
I wish everyone could know, way early on, that they’d have to make that journey one day. That it might be a long way, and your transportation limited, and time running out. I guess then I might have lived some things a little differently. It wa...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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12:57
Nail-pulling
I spent Labor Day relaxing a bad board on my deck and I'm pulling nails. You know, nails go in easier than they come back out. Eventually, a board gets so bad you have to do something, and there you are,having to repair, pull ‘em out...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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13:08
Cancer and Faith in the Wilderness
“ONE MOMENT I WAS a regular person with regular problems. And the next, I was someone with cancer. Before my mind could apprehend it, it was there—swelling to take up every space my imagination could touch. A new and unwanted reality. There was...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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13:57
Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley
Cryptically, Tom said in his last words before dying, that he had never harmed a hair on that girl’s head. So which was it? Here is the essence of great murder mystery—passion, jealousy and betrayal, intrigue, and rivalry of o...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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16:49
Start Young
When we are wringing our hands, troubled in mind, struggling with hope and anxious to the gills, I can pick up my mandolin our guitar at home, play a tune, and feel something lift out of the room. Wherever that sound came from (and as a man of ...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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6:58
June 6 1944
It wasn’t a perfect world, and a lot of divisions and pain were yet to come. But they had one shining moment, too young to even understand, when they poured onto those bloody beaches, the fate of the Western World on those shoulders. <...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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5:34
The Anxious Generation: review
In today's podcast I review Jonathan Haidt's important book on the impact of social media and phones on our children. A powerfully important book and research to know about.Children are learning socially, experimentally, all the t...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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13:54
Eclipse
“The second before the sun went out, we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow con...
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Season 3
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Episode 15
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12:26
Holy Week: Standing at a Distance
They stood at a distance while the women cried, brokenhearted, devastated, sobbing, and his mother beyond soothing.
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Season 3
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Episode 14
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3:48
Holy Week: Rolling Stones
Poetic reflection. When your hopes are dead and you're going to the tomb with an impossible stone to move, what will you do?
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Season 3
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Episode 13
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7:46
Holy Week: The Harrow
Excerpt from SHADOW PRAYERS. A poetic reflection on the bewildering sentence in the Apostles' Creed that says, "He descended into hell."
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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5:34
Holy Week: Sleepover in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
On a trip to Israel in 2010 I ended up voluntarily being locked in to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional site of the crucifixion. As the crowds left and a handful of vigil-sitters and contemplators stayed behind, this happened.
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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3:59
Holy Week: By a Charcoal Fire
There are two charcoal fires mentioned in the gospel narrative of Holy Week. One is where people were warming their hands and identified Peter as one of the disciples. The other was on the shores of Galilee.
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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4:10
Holy Week: Good Friday
Three poems about the pivotal day in the Christian story, full of every human failure and treachery and the heroic and inexplicable faithfulness of Jesus, immovable as all around him collapsed. All poems by Gary Furr."Good Friday""P...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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7:09
Holy Week: Tennebrae
A poem about Tennebrae,f the observance of the deathly silence between crucifixion and Easter Sunday
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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3:53
Holy Week: The Silences of Holy Week
The terrible silences of holy week give spaces for something radically new.. But we anre afraid, so afraid, that we are going to be alone, that we are forsaken, that there is only absence and death and decay. We talk about presence,...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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15:35
Holy Week: The Last Week of Life
A look at the last week of Jesus of Nazareth's life on earth offers a question for us all. When the end is near, how should I live? What would I do differently?
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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11:34
Holy Week: Walking in the Shadow
It is uniquely American to race past hard times and on to the future. As we still grapple with the upheavals of our society wrought by the pandemic, we crave normality without having to do the hard work of real understanding. As we enter Holy W...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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18:48
Bad Case of Healthcare Blues
The question isn't how do we connect spiritual life and healing: it's how did they ever get separated in the first place. At a national conference for caseworkers, I shared six sentences for healing professionals. They're actually valuable for ...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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16:21
Mount Nebo Tales: Remembering Where You Come From
It's worth it to look back when you know how. In this story from the fictional town of Mount Nebo, a young man finds himself returning to the place he said he'd never go, to live among people who were strangers in more ways than one. And the be...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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18:56
Lent on Valentines Day
The odd coincidence of Lent on Valetine’s day leads to a reflection on the tension between letting go and taking up in this episode. A reading from my book, Poems, Prayers and Unfinished Promises.
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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16:12
The Principle of Forgiveness
Endless forgiveness or endless revenge? Reflecting on the bewildering teaching of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew.
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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16:21
SHADOW PRAYERS AUDIOBOOK Part 5 Pentecost
Shadow Prayers Reflections from a Pandemic YearWritten in 2021, Shadow Prayers is a Memoir of a Pastor's final year of ministry, guiding a congregation through the toxic time of pandemic, political division and racial divide. Written...
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26:48
SHADOW PRAYERS AUDIOBOOK Part 10 Last Words
Shadow Prayers Reflections from a Pandemic YearWritten in 2021, Shadow Prayers is a Memoir of a Pastor's final year of ministry, guiding a congregation through the toxic time of pandemic, political division and racial divide. Written...
Subscriber Episode
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34:27
SHADOW PRAYERS AUDIOBOOK Part 9 Epiphany
Shadow Prayers Reflections from a Pandemic YearWritten in 2021, Shadow Prayers is a Memoir of a Pastor's final year of ministry, guiding a congregation through the toxic time of pandemic, political division and racial divide. Written...
Subscriber Episode
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44:01