Life, Faith, and Frogs

Posted on October 15, 2025 by marylbrandt

I have a practice of curating cool things that I share with friends…and (#coincidence?) this post from last week made me think about that practice in a different way. Austin Kleon writes an amazing weekly “newsletter” to send curated stuff he loves to people he knows… but more importantly, to people he wants to know.

I’ve been pondering how to use this website to best serve the people I know (and the people I want to know!) … and I think Austin Kleon just gave me the answer.

So here goes!

My first “letter” to you… a short list of cool stuff that a pediatric surgeon/almost pastor who loves cooking and art (especially writing) thinks approaches “astonishing” (or at least really interesting) and is therefore worth sharing.

Is it Church or church? I’m about to be ordained in the United Church of Christ. I know that surprises you… it kind of surprises me, too, to be honest. But I have come to understand that this is an unexpected extension of my life’s work as a healer… and that church (the place) is really about community (which includes the messiness of being human) while Church is about possibilities. There is something about it that also feels like an act of resistance against a tide of not-love. I’m still figuring it out.

Frogs in Portland. Speaking of resistance… What a statement that Amazon is struggling to keep up with orders for inflatable frog costumes! Although inflatable animal costumes aren’t listed specifically, this kind of protest (mockery and humor) is one of the three ways to undermine autocracy that Nicolas Kristoff describes in this column. (The other two are 1) point out corruption and excess (like massive ballrooms and gold toilets?), and 2) tell individual stories more than making appeals for the principles of democracy.)

Air fryer Okra. If you hate okra this might make you reconsider. No slime, great taste, in a super healthy popcorn-like snack (1lb of okra makes a good snack size bowl for two and has 150 calories, 7.5gm protein, and 14 gm fiber). Add some cumin, garlic powder, or any other spice(s) if you want.

Also Accidental by Ellen C. Bush This poem made me remember and wonder… How many times did I lose count of stitches I placed (or more likely never counted in the first place)? It always seemed to be the first question from my patient (or their parents) once the drapes were off and the dressing placed… “How many stitches did I need, doc?”. What a beautiful reminder that these moments disappear for the sewer, but not those we treat … thanks to a scar (and sometimes a tiny piece of glass left under the skin).

About Blessings (which we need more of IMHO). “A blessing is a form of spoken poetry about the divine. It’s an incredibly positive form of speech, but it’s not simply “reframing.” (We don’t need to say, Oh, never mind. Tragedy is great! I love it. This is my new mind-set practice!) We might use blessing as a kind of act that scholar Stephen Chapman calls “emplacement.” Calling something blessed can let us say: This goes here, that goes there. This is beautiful. This is awful. And all of it can be called true.” Kate Bowler in The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad

A Surgeon’s Blessing for a Friend Undergoing Surgery

Posted on August 29, 2025 by marylbrandt

Stumbling Into Grace

Posted on December 30, 2023 by marylbrandt

Most surgeons perform around 500 operations a year for the 30 to 40 years they are in practice. If you add the procedures we do during training, surgeons walk into an operating room with the intention to heal ~15,000-20,000 times during their professional lives. In addition, for every patient a surgeon treats with surgery, there are at least 10 to 20 they will have seen who don’t require surgery but do require care. So the lives impacted during a typical surgical career number well over 100,000 and, when you include their families and friends, probably approaches half a million people.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a theologian and writer who shares her journey and her remarkable teaching in “The Corners” on Substack

Photo credit – and link to “The Corners”

In her post The Sacred Act of Having No Idea What We Are Doing: On Complimenting Strangers and Sharing our Chicken Dinners, she shared this story…

She shakes my hand and says, “we’ve met – but I do not expect you to remember. I’ve waited 7 years to be able to tell you this: You shared your chicken with me that night and you have no idea what it meant.”

Not what I was expecting her to say.

She went on to tell me how that night, she was at a real low point in the middle of a very painful divorce. We were in the green room and she was supposed to introduce me and she was exhausted and hadn’t eaten all day. Apparently I looked up from my huge chicken dinner and was like, “I’m never gonna eat all of this, please help me out here” and it nearly made her cry.

I have literally no memory of this, but even if I did, I could never have known what it meant to her.

Photo credit

We’ve all had a moment when someone, often a stranger, arrives at a moment of need to share their chicken dinner… or say just the words that heal something we may or may not have known was broken. Whether or not we recognize it, these moments create a subtle but profound shift in the way we view the world and ourselves. And, unbeknownst to us, we deliver the same moments of healing and grace to others. These moments can be deliberate, but more often they are not… and are as simple as picking up a small child covered in bandages to give them a hug, complimenting a stranger’s smile, or bringing a cup of coffee to an exhausted colleague and asking them – really asking them – how they are.

I can’t do it as well as Nadia Bolz-Weber, but here’s my blessing for you….

May you find yourself stumbling into sacred moments (even though you don’t know what you are doing, and probably don’t recognize them). And may you be open enough to recognize, accept, and celebrate the grace of chicken dinners, smiles, and cups of coffee that heal your soul.