Newspaper columns

On gardening, grace and writing

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, October 8, 2016)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Someone (a writer, naturally) once said that writing is like prayer. Prayer, it seems to me, is like gardening. I’ve struggled with all three.

The small garden behind our African home is testament to this. Many seasons it’s been a disappointing annoyance. Nearby trees steal valuable sunlight and nutrients. I suppose the space should never have been chosen to start.

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We live with our parents, even when we don’t

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 17, 2016)

ABOARD KLM FLIGHT 535 TO UGANDA ✦ I’ve always envied people who could watch their mothers grow old.

My mother, I’ve shared previously, passed on when I was in kindergarten. I hadn’t seen her for two years prior to that.

Funny to think of it here, half asleep at 40,000 feet.

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In honour of my father and his well-lived life

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 27, 2016)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was a different time and place on the day I watched another human being die in my father’s arms. I was just a boy.

Bert had epileptic seizures, medically uncontrollable then. Tall and lanky, he’d crumple and fall hard on the floor in the house, or outside under the apple tree, or in places between, shaking, convulsing, rigid as a board. I’d watch. All the time. Bert lived with us.

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The good news about the bad news

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 20, 2016)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It’s funny how you can give a torch to someone and he’ll light up the world, and give the same torch to someone else and he’ll burn the place down.

It’s like love and hate. They’re both consuming fires, but with different ends. (The ultimate difference is that hate is all-consuming, and, like evil, will eventually consume itself.)

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An anniversary wish to the music of my life

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, July 29, 2016)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It’s a warm and ordinary day, warm and ordinary enough to run around in shorts and bare feet.

The children’s mother, your babe, that is your bride, is playing your song. The cats are in front and the dog’s in back and the kids are doing homework and nothing much is happening, except this song from the piano in the other room, the piece that makes your blood jump every time.

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Lessons we can learn from Eddie the Eagle

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(The Hamilton Spectator, Monday, July 4, 2016)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦

“They that wait upon the Lord will mount up with wings as eagles; they will run and not be weary; they will walk and not faint.”

The Hebrew prophet, Isaiah

The sad news of the day, or any day, is that the world is full of people who lack hope and basic belief in themselves because they’ve long been told in one way or another that they’ll never amount to anything, that they have nothing to offer, and the sooner they realize this the better it will be for all concerned.

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A world where the beautiful and terrible live side by side

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 18, 2016)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was my daughter’s first teenage birthday party and the family van was full of giggling girls.

The verdict on the Tim Bosma trial wasn’t in, not yet, when we pulled into the bowling ally across from Carmen’s banquet hall and I said, “Tim Bosma’s funeral was in that hall. And his wedding too.”

Silence fell. One girl said it was terrible what happened to Tim. Then my barely 13-year-old asked, “Why would they have his wedding and funeral at the same place?”

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