Newspaper columns Archives – Page 30 of 60

Lingering on the edge of forgetfulness

(Christian Week – Friday, August 15, 2014)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The sad truth of the matter is that when we stop reading the Bible with any faith or confidence, when we stop discussing it at dinner with our children, when we stop wrestling with it in our meeting places and home gatherings and while lying in bed, we’re no longer connected to the grand sweep of it, to history, that is His Story, which is also our story.

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Being open to life’s surprises

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / July 19, 2014 / 2014, Bilbo Baggins, brevity of life, Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese, Froese biography, life's adventure, Lord of the Rings, Madame Curie, Order of Canada, Pierre Curie, satire, The Hobbit, travel / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, July 19, 2014)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was in the whirlpool at the Les Chater Y when I was congratulated for My Bride’s recent naming into the Order of Canada. The woman, another early-morning swimmer, had read the news in this publication.

“Let’s face it,” she said. “You’ve had a role to play in this all. Any woman who wins something like this has to be married to a certain sort of man. If Madame Curie hadn’t been married to Pierre, she’d have been forced to be home barefoot, baking bread.”

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It’s a privilege to be a father

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 14, 2014 / 2014, careerisim, Father's Day, fatherhood, Frederick Buechner, Froese biography, goal-setting, life choices, men's identity, relationships, stay-at-home dads / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 14, 2014)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The sad truth is that the world is full of Charlie Gray sort of people who have listened to all the wrong voices and spent entire swaths of the only life they have doing things that haven’t mattered to them in the least, and, in the grand scheme of things, have mattered little to others also.

They’re people like in John Marquand’s novel “Point of No Return,” where Charlie Gray, after years of apple-polishing, is finally named vice-president of that fancy little New York bank, the promotion that finally gives him and his family the security they need.

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Known by our love ( … or the things we’re against?)

Leave a Comment / Christian Week, Newspaper columns / May 23, 2014 / 2014, brevity of life, Christianity, death, Jim Morrison's grave, Père Lachaise Cemetery, religiosity, spirituality / 3 minutes of reading

(Christian Week – Friday, May 23, 2014)

PARIS ✦ Dead rock stars aren’t the only idols to worship out there. Houses and cars, retirement portfolios, relationships and sex—or, well, religion—can be equally distracting in a fallen world looking for things as nebulous as truth and meaning.

But come to the Père Lachaise Cemetery and see for yourself the cult of rock-star celebrity. In this gothic and tumbledown resting place of some of the world’s best-known artists—Chopin, Bizet, Proust, Oscar Wilde to name a few—Jim Morrison’s grave is by far the most visited.

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Boogeyman paranoia where shadows lurk at every corner

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / May 17, 2014 / 2014, childhood anxiety, culture of litigation, fear, fear and anxiety, Froese biography, locked schools, paranoia, Sandy Hook school murders, soulfulness / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 17, 2014)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ There was a time when a neighbourhood school was a place that nourished your soul. It wasn’t that long ago. I’m not that old.

You’d go to play, say, baseball on Saturday morning or, in winter, hockey on the rink that your Grade 6 teacher lovingly flooded outside the row of windows where even the good students looked out to daydream.

It was a time when you’d walk to school every morning. By yourself. Even when the school bully – her last name was, fittingly, Greenall – went the same way. It somehow even brought out courage that you never knew you had.

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A strange forgiveness

1 Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / April 19, 2014 / 2014, forgiveness, Rwandan genocide, Rwandan genocide 20th anniversary, Rwandan recovery, Rwandan reunification / 4 minutes of reading

The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, April 20, 2014

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Forgive and forget is how the old saying goes, but you and I both know that it’s not worth spit, that we’ll never forget certain crimes committed against us, maybe even imagined crimes like those in a recent dream of mine.

It was a nightmare with Africans carrying machetes. I looked out my window. The university grounds where I live was crawling with the killers.

“We won’t kill anyone,” one said. He looked at me through a window of a bedroom where my 10-year-old daughter lay sleeping. “We’ll just cut your arm off.”

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Dear student who’s cheating: You’re rotting inside out

Leave a Comment / Newspaper columns, The Standard / March 31, 2014 / 2014, African education, African university life, cheating, dishonest gain, education as business, education in Uganda, student pressures / 3 minutes of reading

(The UCU Standard – Monday, March 31, 2014)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It’s a new day, a good day, a day when you’ll be tested. Yes, it’s time for another exam and you, dear UCU student, are out of bed, finished your breakfast and walking with a confident smile.

This is why today is such a fine day: you know the answers, every one of them. Because you know the questions too.

Nobody is suspecting that you’re a cheater because you know the game and you play it with skill

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Uganda is Gay Ground Zero thanks to fear, politics and misguided religiosity

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / March 15, 2014 / 2014, African culture, African politics, East-West relations, fear, homosexuality, human rights, relationships, suffering, Uganda's anti-gay bill, Uganda's anti-gay law, Uganda's Jail-the-Gays law, Ugandan politics, Yoweri Museveni / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 15, 2014)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦Fear is a strange thing, which is why it’s so hard to look into the eyes of another human being that you’re about to gas or bomb or, in the case of Uganda’s gays, throw to the lions.

This is also why President Yoweri Museveni recently refused to meet with Uganda’s gay community – there were repeated requests – before signing Uganda’s infamous anti-gay law.

The new law means even touching with the intent of a homosexual act – try to prove or disprove this one – will get you seven years. Short of jail, a life-sentence for a single homosexual act, there’s obviously also a new chill on the street here.

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