49 results for tag: Stuart Segall
All Times Friend – Stuart Segall
A Friend Loves At All Times.
I am such a work in progress, often sloooow progress, but my mind was so on this proverb.
“A friend loves at all times” (Proverbs 17:17) is not just a statement; it’s a quiet commitment. It speaks of a love that doesn’t flinch when the weather turns, doesn’t vanish when the laughter fades, doesn’t measure its presence by convenience or gain. This kind of friendship is not seasonal or situational. It’s steady. It’s rooted.
To love “at all times” means through the ordinary and the aching. It means showing up when the house is messy, when the words are hard to find, when the heart is heavy or ...
The Seekers – Stuart Segall
“A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home.” — Carl Joe Burns
I have been the boy on the ground looking and longing upward at the plane. And I have often been looking out the window of the plane. Here are thoughts on longing, perspective, and the way desire bends toward what we don’t have. This is so simple, and yet so real to most people.The child, rooted in the soil and what once was the simplicity of rural life, looks up and sees possibility: the sky, major movement, the speed, or, for others, the escape. The plane is not just metal and ...
The Reality and Beauty of Being Simple – Stuart Segall
The journey of my life has always reminded me, whenever I look in the mirror, that I’m a pretty simple person. Nothing particularly lofty seems to be happening above my eyebrows, and no one has ever accused me of being strong. I look for the arms of Popeye, but I see the arms of his girlfriend, Olive Oyl.
Last night, while praying, I came across a scripture that stopped me. I saw the word simple and thought, “Well… simple, Stuart, that’s me.”
Psalm 116 speaks of a God who is gracious, righteous, and merciful; a God who “preserves the simple”; a God who saves when we are brought low; a God who invites the soul to return to rest ...
Hinds’ Feet by Stuart Segall
Life has never been a straight road for me. It has been a winding climb that has been marked by valleys of loss, stretches of loneliness, and moments where the ground beneath me felt too fragile to hold. Yet, just as often, there have been glimpses of light when I needed it most! There were unexpected tender mercies and the quiet strength to take one more step upward when I thought I couldn’t. My story is not one of ease, but of endurance. In the world of psychology, I would be labeled a “survivor” profile. One of stumbling and rising, of learning to trust the One who steadies my feet when the path at times seemed ...
Speaking Sheepishly – Stuart Segall
Three gentle creatures standing obediently before a barrier that holds no real power offer a quiet parable about perception and divine perspective. The gate is symbolic not of confinement, but of the illusion of confinement.
There are no fences, no walls, no true enclosure. Yet the sheep remain, as if the iron bars were sacred law. God sees an open pasture. We feel the weight of impossibility; God sees the ease of a step to the side. The image invites us to laugh gently at ourselves, not in mockery but in compassion, realizing how often we mistake the appearance of confinement for reality.
To us, our struggles often feel like that gate: ...
Reflections of Him – Stuart Segall
I still, almost daily, serve those who carry a poor or unhealthy self-image. Since we were made in His image, one of the most powerful ways to rediscover and feel that truth is to serve and uplift others, just as the Lion did, and still does. When you bless and esteem others, the next time you see your own reflection, I have a hunch you’ll be surprised by what you see.
Why? Good question. If we were made in His image, then every act of compassion, every moment of grace extended, is a return to that likeness.
There’s something quietly transformative about serving others, especially those burdened by a wounded sense of self. In that daily ...
The Greatest Illness Needs the Greatest Too – Stuart Segall
“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.” — Mother Teresa
For someone like me, who moves through the world with a reflective spirit and a reverence for presence, this quote feels like a call to ritual: to notice the invisible hunger in others, to offer warmth not as a transaction but as a sacrament. It reminds me that love, simple, attentive, ...
Can You Remember When? – Stuart Segall
There’s something quietly profound in this moment, in this scene that speaks to my heart. It is me, it is a child, absorbed in the earth’s textures, surrounded by blooming life, unaware of the digital tides that shape our world.
I heard someone speaking the other day, that “we are the last generation on earth that knows what life was like before social media”. Now, this is not a lament for technology, but an elegy for unfiltered presence, for the silence that once held us, for wonder stumbled upon in gardens, creeks, and conversations unrecorded. In my counseling, I see this becoming a lost understanding: the art of being, without ...
Wild Geese – Stuart Segall
Editor’s note: photo above is of Trumpeter Swans, not Wild Geese, but … close enough. You “get” the picture!!
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert. repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the ...
Table For Two – Stuart Segall
Table For Two.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” —Psalm 23:5
This verse is steeped in symbolism, emotional depth, and spiritual paradox. The initial context of Psalm 23 follows the tender imagery of God as shepherd, guiding, protecting, and providing. But here, the metaphor shifts. The “table” prepared in the presence of enemies is not a retreat—it’s a bold declaration of peace and dignity in the face of adversity.
It’s a table for two. Just God and you. He wants your eyes locked on his, even now, especially now.
What’s striking is that the table isn’t hidden away in safety. It’s laid ...
The Prodigal Cat: A Tale of Wanderlust, Winter Firelight, and Grace – Stuart Segall
Nestled on the slopes near Stevens Pass, just a short drive from the fairytale town of Leavenworth, Washington, there’s a candy shop called The Alps—a place that seems plucked from the pages of a childhood dream. I first stumbled upon it in the early ’90s, entranced by the swirl of sweet aromas and shelves stacked like something out of Candyland. But amid the chocolates and gumdrops, it wasn’t just sugar that left its imprint—it was the story of a cat. A restless, remarkable soul who, over the years, came to embody something profoundly human.
The owners of the shop were an elderly Austrian couple, gentle and kind, with eyes that ...
Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird” – by Stuart Segall
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Robert Frost’s The Oven Bird ...
Our True Significance – by Stuart Segall
At a time in life about 15 years ago, I felt useless. I did not know what I had left in me. Would I somehow be able to regroup, retool, and rethink? How I reflect on this when I look back and now read this quote."No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another," carries a profoundly wonderful message for folks like me. At its core, each act of kindness, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, adds value to our collective human experience. You see, our worth isn’t solely determined by great achievements or grand milestones; rather, it is measured by the way we contribute to easing another’s struggles.Charles ...
June 2025
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(PDF Format)
Greg Albrecht Everlasting Love – pg. 2
Ed Dunn Two Types of Fathers – pg. 5
Stuart Segall Alone – pg. 6
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Be a lamp – a lifeboat – or a ladder by Stuart Segall
“Be a lamp – a lifeboat – or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
Who first expressed this? No one knows for sure. They say “Rumi” did but that does not matter. What matters is that these words say so much! Do these words speak to you?
When I first read these words some time ago, it made me think about who perhaps in our life has been, or perhaps will be in such a role as this.
Do you think of someone who has been a lamp? To be a lamp for another human is to be someone who brings light to the darkness, or one who helps light the way home. He or she might ...
A Few Thoughts From A Real Diver……..Dumpster Diver That Is – by Stuart Segall
In my world, I do volunteer work with people who are in nursing, care homes and other residences. I visit people who simply lack company or get very little of it. When I do, I listen to their stories of days gone by. Seniors, like all of us, love to tell their old stories. Often, they like to be read to. There are far more people than hours in the day so when I need to exit, I leave them beautiful flowers. I grow all I can, lots of roses, forty-seven bushes and counting. In the winter I do janitor work for a long-time business friend who owns three flower shops. Friday, she cleans out her flower ...
Contentment With Appreciation – Stuart Segall
Lost a lot of people in 2024, didn’t we? Lots of folks are struggling with real and debilitating health issues. Health and loss, part of the ongoing struggles of our lives. How do we deal with them?
Writing to a German friend on his sixty-fourth birthday, ten years after his paralytic stroke, Walt Whitman reflects on what the limitations of living in a disabled body have taught him about the meaning of a full life:
"From today I enter upon my 64th year. The paralysis that first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain’d, with varying course — seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably continue. I easily tire, am ...
Times Like These – Stuart Segall
These words (from Psalm 23:3) and imagery powerfully remind us of hope and guidance, even in the face of pain and devastation caused by events like catastrophic raging wildfires. My mother loved this verse - she had it embroidered in my bedroom. She understood the power of the image and the words of this verse. She often did not have the right words for my painful times as a youth, but she would often sit me down to face the framed words that hung in my room.
Sometimes for me, it takes loss, death, setbacks, and grief to have my attention focused on these timely words. These painful experiences cause us to stop, listen, and hopefully look ...
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