Author: Gary Furr

I am a musician, writer and Christian minister living in Alabama. I am founder and President of the Alabama Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children.
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Mourner in Chief

Gary Furr

An air tragedy in the night. All were lost.  The shockwaves rolled out from the Potomac to Kansas to Boston and even to Russia. Brilliant young skaters and their families and entourage, people going home, people living life. A fiery crash and suddenly life flips upside down. Now the press conferences and investigations, the courageous first responders, anguished families.  President Trump began his press conference in an expected way, with a moment of silence, then plunged into a weird and irrelevant riff of unfounded speculation, blaming and untruths.  Abraham Maslow wrote in 1966, “it is tempting, if the only tool … Continue reading Mourner in Chief

America, Citizenship, Culture, Ethics, Leadership, Politics, Story

Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me

Gary Furr

Jackie Gleason used to play a character called the Poor Soul. He walked with a slump and every step he took said, “I don’t deserve to be here.” I’ve been trying to figure out how a man who has the office of President and a cowering party that never calls him out can walk around like everyone is so mean to him. We’re running out of teacups for President Trump’s tempests. He does love them. The poor man. People seem to be so mean to him. Most recently, of course, it was a gentle admonition at the National Cathedral, when … Continue reading Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me

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Jimmy Carter’s Vision

Gary Furr

I had an earlier podcast about Jimmy Carter in February of 2023. He has woven in and out of my life for forty plus years. His funeral has been a powerful moment to stop and consider what life is about. That’s what funerals at their best can accomplish. We mark a passing, but also stop to mark our own journey to the same place. Maybe we slow down long enough to ask, “Am I living life as it is meant to be? ​In early 2009, I was asked to host Jimmy Carter’s visit to Birmingham for the New Baptist Covenant. He was … Continue reading Jimmy Carter’s Vision

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An Advent Prayer

Gary Furr

A prayer offered in 1993, my first year at a new pastorate, as part of a lovely service of lessons and carols led by Mrs. Marlene Taylor and the choir. Beloved in Christ, Advent invites our hearts and imaginations to            bring us again to the angels’ song, To lead us to sleepy Bethlehem where we behold again           the wonder of the Babe, lying in a manger. Therefore let us re-enter the Holy Scriptures and trace again           the trail of God’s loving purposes           that leads from God’s own eternal creative and loving heart           through our first … Continue reading An Advent Prayer

Christmas, The Incarnation

Stories of Christmas

Gary Furr

I am partial to storytelling and storytellers, since I am one. But in no place more than the birth story of Jesus does this reality hit home.  The more rational types are always trying to turn Christianity into a series of propositions which only succeeds in rendering the most thrilling narrative ever to grace a mind into propositions and abstractions that could be used as sleep aids. No, when God set out to save humanity in the Christian telling, it was in stories. The smallest elements of a story. There’s a subject. There is a verb. And you have a … Continue reading Stories of Christmas