(Reading on Facebook?  Please, please, please click here to see it as it ought to look!  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) It’s been…a marathon.  A six-month marathon involving more people than have ever been involved in Candlelight Dinner before.  Rough calculations?     Set-up and tear-down:  25    Waiters:  30    Hosts and hostesses:  17    Servers:  5Buffet staff:  24    Food services:  10    […]

Eighty-six students onstage, eighteen wireless mics, and eight days until it will all be over.  Candlelight Dinner season has gone into high gear, and today’s 7-hour dress rehearsal marked the beginning of the final sprint.  Aside from the scores of students onstage, there will be dozens more involved behind the scenes and in service to […]

It was the day my dad found out that he had leukemia.  I remember his words so clearly–their determined optimism and the tremulous courage in his voice   He marked the beginning of his battle against The Beast by simply stating, “Here we go.” Well…here we go.  I finally got word tonight from my doctors in […]

(PLEASE don’t read this post on Facebook!  The pictures will be so much bigger and prettier if you just click on this link: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine)These past few weeks have been so full of startling news and progressive discovery that it’s been hard to keep my mind on things as banal as calendars, “three square meals” and […]

GOOD NEWS:  The German doctors have finally, after two weeks of searching, found my biopsy slides, also known as McSlides.  I’m now able to send all my reports to the States to be reviewed there.  Making headway sure feels good…  Meanwhile, I’ll be heading to Prague at 4:00 tomorrow morning!  I’ll be traveling with 12 […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Please click this link to see this blog entry as it ought to look…  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) There is a saying in the Christian community that makes me angry, and hearing it again a few days ago has rekindled my dislike for it.  Whoever first coined the phrase was probably well-intentioned, but its implications […]

I stepped back into the choir classroom yesterday for the first time in three weeks and was struck again by the sound of 52 voices crammed into a small space.  Oh, it wasn’t transcendental harmonies and flawless diction that caught my attention.  It was noise—the kind of noise that hums with reunion talk and spikes […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Please, please, please click here to read this entry as it should be: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) I have a new friend.  His name is Mac.  When I first heard that he was coming for a visit—no, had already come—I instinctively despised him.  There were three major reasons for my instant hatred: 1.  I felt […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Please don’t.  Click here instead: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine)There’s a real post brewing.  It’s been brewing for a while, actually, and I have felt it keenly.  But it’s not quite ready to be put into words yet.  So while my internal percolator percolates, here are a few of the views that have inspired me and […]

(IF you’re seeing this on Facebook, click on the following link to see the pictures in their best artistic context: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine!  IF you’re reading on Xanga, you might want to check out the rest of the pics on Facebook…but only after you’ve see these here!    Complicated?  Yup…but no one ever said I was simple.) […]