Welcome!

Welcome! You may have visited this website before — and found nobody home.

That has changed. Come on in, stay a couple of minutes and see what this is all about.

I thought this “door” would be open much sooner, but my wife and I found that our book, Door to a Lasting Marriage, took much longer to reach the market than we had anticipated.  This website is based on that book — though at times it may wander from it.  So the book had to be out there first.

I’m phobic over the word “religious” — don’t like it. Yet, some may come to call our book and this website religious. I never will because they are not.  Frederick Buechner — Presbyterian pastor, riveting speaker, powerful writer — has said, with apparently some regret, that his writing is “… too religious for secular readers… and too secular for religious ones.”  I’m like Buechner in two ways. I’m a Presbyterian pastor (now retired) and secondly I’m in step with his quote about turning away the secular and the religious.  In no way can I hold a candle to Buechner’s writing or speaking but I’m as undaunted as he in taking up the risk of turning everybody away.

My goal here is the same as my wife’s and mine in Door to a Lasting Marriage.  We’re sold on marriage — even more so after more than 60 years.  In the book we tell our story so that it may help others with their marriages.  In this vast world of ours we think there may be those marriages that have found nothing but calm seas and smooth sailing. (We even came across a marriage once that made that claim!) If you are of that number our book and this site are not for you.  We do claim that our marriage has gotten to the place where it’s a great marriage 90% of the time.  The other 10% not so good.  But we’re still working at it.

My hope is that you who connect with the goal above will at the same time be open to connect with the One Above who invented marriage.  But, again, I identify with Buechner who says, “I always hope to reach people who don’t want to touch religion with a ten foot pole.”  It’s a journey.  I hope you will join me here whenever you can.