Newspaper columns Archives – Page 30 of 64

The winds of political change blowing hard

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / November 7, 2015 / 2015, Istanbul, journalism, travel, Turkey, Turkish politics / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, November 7, 2015)

ISTANBUL, Turkey ✦ This starts in Hamilton where I was driving to my local polling station amidst dead leaves blowing everywhere, as hard as the winds of political change.

It was the first time in 14 years I was around in the fall to see the trees lose their lifeblood, a moment in time, even as we all, after our simple X on a paper put in a cardboard box, watched change blow into Ottawa.

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A hope in hell

Leave a Comment / Christian Courier, Newspaper columns / October 12, 2015 / 2015, Christianity, free choice, hell, Jesus Christ, Jesus in hell, spirituality / 3 minutes of reading

(Christian Courier, October 12, 2015)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ They’re out there, people who’d say that they don’t believe in hell any more than they believe in heaven, but you can never be sure what anyone really thinks about these sorts of questions because you can hardly expect anyone to be honest with you when they don’t know how to be honest with themselves.

Your neighbour might say that it’s nothing but malarkey – heaven, hell, God, the devil, the entire lot of it (this is the 21st century, after all) – but he’d tell you that he doesn’t believe in gravity, yet his disbelief doesn’t run so deep that he’d actually step off a tall building.

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Life is in the small pleasures, the simple moments

2 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / September 26, 2015 / 2015, dogs, dogs in Africa, faithfulness, family life, German Shepherds, pets, small pleasures, the good life / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday, September 26, 2015)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Our dog, Zak, is a fine-looking German shepherd with a deep bark and a good name. (I mean, if your name is all you can ever fully own, surely that’s true for dogs too.)

He’s wary of strangers and, I suspect, would give his life if called to. He has a funny relationship with his food, never uses his doghouse, (preferring our back door), and loves rolling in the morning dew.

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Of lions, children and innocence of lives given

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / September 4, 2015 / 2015, Aslan, Baraah Fakierah Foundation, Cecil the lion, Chronicles of Narnia, eucastrophe, lions, suffering, war children, Yemen, Yemen’s civil war / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 29, 2015)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ If you were a lion you’d have little in common with any little girl, unless it’s the summer of 2015 when you could both die horrible deaths on the other side of the ocean and people on this side would know.

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Truth under cover

Leave a Comment / Christian Week, Newspaper columns / August 22, 2015 / 2015, Christ's cross, marriage, religious symbols, symbols, the Charleston massacre, the Confederate flag, wedding rings / 3 minutes of reading

(Christian Week – August 2015)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The ring that my wife put on my finger on the day that we married stayed there for some years until the sorry day it flew off while my arm was in mid-upstroke in an Ontario lake.

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(I’m 50 now.) Inline skates? Yes. Smartphone? No.

1 Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / July 25, 2015 / 2015, anxiety, birthdays, distraction, Hamilton's bayfront, inline skating, longevity, smart-phones, turning 50 / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, July 25, 2015)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The last time I peed in a bottle, my doctor looked it over, then looked me over, took my blood pressure and finally said, “Good God, man! How in the world do you manage to do it?”

He told me that he thought I’d live to be 100, and then, if I remember correctly, (which I don’t always, anymore), he said something about putting a large poster of me in his clinic (or was it on the front of the building?) to encourage others of my, uh, vintage. I think that’s what he said, anyway.

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O Canada, Hannah stands on guard for thee

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 30, 2015 / 2015, adoption, African adoption, Canada, Canada Day, Canadian citizenship, Canadian history, Froese biography, meaning of name Canada, The Canadian train, travel / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 27, 2015)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ My youngest daughter, Hannah, is a cool girl who loves water, makes friends easily and puts lots of maple syrup on her pancakes. She laughs more than I do, often from a deep and hearty place.

She likes the fact that her name – which in the original Hebrew means “gracious” or “God’s gift to the world” – is spelled the same forwards and back.

Canada is cool too. It makes fine maple syrup and, as far as countries go, laughs more than many.

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We’re stuck in this brokenness together

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 6, 2015 / 2015, American civil war, Charleston, families, human brokenness, John Donne, love, poets, relationships, Rilke, spirituality, T.S. Eliot, the art of living / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 6, 2015)

CHARLESTON, S.C. ✦ We’re in the ocean, waves crashing at our knees, salt on our lips, my daughter and me and all these poets in my head.

My daughter (today she turns 12) laughs and dances and spins in circles and says, “No, Daddy, don’t take any more pictures. Just come and run with me. Enjoy the moment.”

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