There are always gentle and innocent ways to have your heart ripped open. One way is to talk to someone who may or may not be alive the next time you think of them. In this case you’re talking with Paul, hands-free, on the road. It’s a sunny June day and there’s no cost, talking all the way to Uganda. It’s 21st-century living.
If you think the pandemic was bad in Canada … Read More »
It’s a happy-enough moment of me and the children in this photo from Father’s Day 10 years ago. But today’s thoughts are about grieving as much as anything. Because it was just another morning with the sun established in the sky when the children’s mother, leaving the house, said what she did. “All our fathers,” is all she said. Her eyes welled up while she hugged me. Her broken
Are we losing faith in fatherhood? Read More »
The sunny news from around here is that I recently drove up a regional road with the three Chumbuckets, that is my three teens, to get their COVID jabs. We didn’t see any hitchhikers. Yeah, yeah, who hitchhikes anymore? Still, I like to keep an eye, you know? One summer day – Child No. 1 was with me – we did help one, a middle-aged woman who clamoured into our vehicle with her
Recalling the lost art of hitchhiking Read More »
Today let’s imagine you’re a Wall Street lawyer. Your towering New York office overlooks the Statue of Liberty. You’re high powered, enjoy your colleagues, and like asking those lawyer-like “what if” questions. You’re successful. What would ever make you leave? While you think about that, let’s travel to the Liverpool bar where thousands of Brits recently celebrated without
The north and south of who we are Read More »
So Darling Doctor Wife, otherwise known as Dr. Jean, recently came home from an off-duty visit to labour and delivery to see Hosanna Froese, a preemie who arrived in this world eight weeks early. Hosanna’s mother, with COVID-19, isolated at home while tiny Hosanna, all 4.1 pounds of her, started life not at her mother’s breast, but in
Mothers and their babies living in risky times Read More »
“Healing place for the soul,” is what the ancient Greeks wrote at the doorways to their libraries. You don’t get that sacredness when you visit, say, YouTube. Or Netflix. Or your handy smartphone. “In the beginning was the Word,” is what the ancients also declared. Not “In the beginning was the microchip.” It’s something to think about this upcoming week, our ongoing relationship, or lack
The beauty and blessing of books in our lives Read More »
Rabbits are wonderful animals to bring a smile to any child, especially chocolate rabbits, but you’d never place much hope for peace on the Easter Bunny. Not that a rabbit can’t speak to Easter. It can. Once my little girl’s rabbit went into eternity, so to speak, in Uganda, after the neighbour boy experimented with how many times it might spin in midair.
The place of Easter in our modern world Read More »
Today in this space we continue to explore the most pressing issues of our time, now with the difficult question that’s on everyone’s mind: should we let dogs teach in our universities? My own view is that if my dog, Grace, taught, say, my literature class, she’d do fine. “Today,” she’d say, sitting in front of her class, crossing one furry leg over the other, “we’ll look at grace.”
There’s a certain grace in loving Grace Read More »
