(The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, July 13, 2016)
SEWICKLEY, PA ✦ Gordie Howe died on the day we played hockey in front of Mario Lemieux’s house. It was one of those things.
Playing hockey with Gordie and Mario — sort of Read More »
(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.
Lessons we can learn from Eddie the Eagle Read More »
(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?”
A world where the beautiful and terrible live side by side Read More »
(The UCU Standard – Monday, May 23, 2016)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was in Canada and we were at a campy lakeside retreat, and it was a beautiful summer day and a gaggle of children were playing outside the large window near where we ate.
My daughter, that is my adopted Ugandan daughter, Hannah, looked at me with a tear rolling down her cheek. I asked her what was the matter, and, looking down in shame, she said, “I’m the only black person here.”
Home is a place of God’s differences Read More »
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 20, 2016)
HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ So it’s the middle of the night and my wife walks into the bedroom and says: “There’s a mouse in the dishwasher.”
This is strange even for our household, the sort of announcement that suggests my wife is hallucinating from working way too late, again, or that I’m having one of those dreams.
The mouse and the dishwasher Read More »
ATHENS ✦ I’ll never forget the unknown boy and his horrible end, not any more than I’ll forget Arash and his eyes on the day we met when the waters of the Mediterranean were cold.
The unknown boy and finding hope in dark places Read More »
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, April 22, 2016)
BRUSSELS-ZAVENTUM AIRPORT ✦ Once upon a time (otherwise known as “the old days,”) people would watch news on their old televisions, or listen on their old radios, or pick up old newspapers that even landed on their front porches (remember front porches?) with a thud.
An airport cross-point in Brussels Read More »
(The New Vision – Tuesday, March 22, 2016)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It’s the foolish things of this world that can shame the wise and the weak that can upend the strong. This is how it was put a couple of millennia ago by the apostle Paul when he foreshadowed this great reversal, this deep sorting out that will be known only fully in the hereafter.
But it’s the story-tellers in the here-and-now who often say the very same thing, and you’d have to be blind or deaf or both not to see it in the new Star Wars movie, “Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” which recently made it here to Uganda.
Light and darkness on screen Read More »
