A resident of Norway since 2000, Ed Gabrielsen is currently working on a Master’s of Divinity at the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas. His son Eli works at a French restaurant in Providence. His daughter Eva does design work at a publishing company in New York City. Gabrielsen has one younger brother. Though his father is deceased, his mother lives in Texas.

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I was born in Chicago. When I was young, we lived in the Midwest. That’s when my dad and mom were officers in the Salvation Army, which meant we moved every year.

My father grew up playing the cornet. He was a virtuoso musician and a cornet soloist for the Salvation Army’s Chicago Staff Band. He was really well known. He taught me and my brother to play.

When I was in the 1st grade, my brother, my dad and I did cornet trios together. We’d play Christmas carols on street corners and in front of Marshall Field’s. It was sometimes so cold my mouth would stick to the mouthpiece and my fingers would stick to the valves.

I stopped playing cornet in junior high, but I kept up with the piano, which my mother taught me.

When I was 16, I started taking voice lessons, but I could never sing the way I wanted to. If you can do a lot of things easily, there is always one thing you can’t. It drove me crazy,

I was about to start the 6th grade when my dad made a career change. He was the third generation in his family to be involved with the Salvation Army. When we moved to Houston, Texas so he could become the chaplain at St Luke’s Hospital Medical Center, it tore him up.

Moving to Houston was like moving to another planet. We had been taught that because we were part of the Salvation Army, we were different. They didn’t say we were above other people, but there was this idea that we were not of this world.

My mother wanted to join the Southern Baptist Church. I went to church a lot in high school. Then things I was hearing in sermons started to bother me. I started to question everything. I became disillusioned.

After high school, I went to Texas A&M University because my best friend went there and also because I had decided to become an architect.

While I was in college, my parents’ marriage disintegrated. I had this idea if you really loved someone, love would endure. No matter how much I prayed about my parents, they still divorced. It was another disillusionment. It shattered my world.

I dropped out of school and church and stopped believing in God. I started to read Alan Watts and got a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. I went to my first meditation retreat and got interested in Buddhism and yoga. I went in that direction for the next 30 years.

I married Jill the year I graduated from A&M. We moved to Arizona so she could do her residency at the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson. I worked on a road construction crew, but I hurt my back. After that, I enrolled at UA to work on a second BA in music.

Jill signed up for the Air Force Reserves when the Air Force needed doctors. They paid her a stipend while she finished her residency. When she was done, she owed them three years.

The Air Force sent us to a base in Aviano, Italy. We lived in an Italian neighborhood. Though I did become fluent, I could only say a few words in Italian. I didn’t even know that the building next to me was a grocery store.

I was taking care of Eli, who had been born three months before we shipped out. I started leading meditation groups and got involved with some Tibetan monks, many who came to visit.

Six years later, when Jill got out, I did not want to go back to Texas. A friend from college and I had taken a bike trip through Maine when I was 19. I had always wanted to go back. I thought, “Why don’t we move there.”

Once Jill accepted a job at Stephens, we began to look for a house. We found an old 1820 house. Jill loved it but I thought it was a money trap. Against my better judgment, we bought it in 2000.

By then we also had a daughter. I was a stay-at-home dad and also did some pick-up carpentry jobs. Then I did a major renovation, which took me five years.

One day Jill, Eva and I were eating lunch outside at what used to be the Trolley House. I started hearing sirens and seeing a lot of fire engines going by. I remember saying, “That must be a big fire,” just as my phone started ringing. It was our house that was on fire.

I jumped into my truck with the fire engines right behind me. I have never driven that fast.

When I got to the Greenwood Road, and I could see a huge column of black smoke, my heart just sank. I got to my house, pulled over, dropped down onto my knees and watched. It took six hours for my house to burn down. Four weeks later, Jill said she wanted a divorce. I felt totally lost.

It took me three years to recover enough to think about what I wanted to do. Rather than build another house, I went back to school. I had been the music director at the Waterford Congregational Church. I really liked being in the church community so I chose seminary. A lot of my friends felt called into ministry. I did not have an On the Road to Damascus experience. It was all very organic.

In the fall of 2016, I moved to Dallas to attend the Perkins School of Theology. I spent three years there and will spend this year in Rockland as a student pastor at the Congregational Church.

I think of Norway as my hometown. I know people and people know me. They know my story. After you move so many times it’s nice to be somewhere that feels comfortable. It’s nice to not be a stranger.