Newspaper columns

Where angels and devils collide

4 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / / , , , , / 4 minutes of reading

(Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 2, 2015)

DACHAU, GERMANY ✦ I may be a ghost you don’t even believe exists, but before I get there let me tell you about this scene in the Arthur Miller play “Incident at Vichy,” where there’s a well-to-do professional, (like I was when I lived), standing before the Nazi authority now in town.

The man, dignified with degrees and references and these sorts of things, presents what he has to the Nazi who then asks, “Is this all you have?” The man nods. “Good,” says the Nazi, throwing it all into the garbage. “Now you have nothing.”

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Mysterious and foolish things

Leave a Comment / Newspaper columns, The Standard / / , , , , , , / 3 minutes of reading

(The UCU Standard – March 19 – April 5, 2015)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ As a boy I hoped for, and believed in, small and foolish things that at the time seemed big and sensible enough. Now I hope for things that are big and sensible enough to my children, even if I think they’re small and foolish to me.

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One day, my story could be yours

4 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / / , , , , , , , / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, February 21, 2015)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ He was Swiss and we were talking over coffee and he said he’d just read my story about Canada’s new look at assisted suicide. He spoke as if I’d written on this, which I had not, or maybe he called it my story simply because I’m Canadian.

He said he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Europe, after all, liberated itself from any shameful baggage on assisted suicide long ago. If you want to die, he explained, you can easily go to places and doctors for help.

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Better than wine. Stronger than death.

Leave a Comment / Christian Week, Newspaper columns / / , , , , , , , , , , / 3 minutes of reading

(Christian Week, February 2015)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ “Love is better than wine,” is how the writer of the Song of Songs put it. “Love is stronger than death.”

Solomon, said to be the wisest of men ever, is credited with the words that resonate with meaning even now, almost 3,000 years later, even in our time, as insecure and fickle an age as any.

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Cradle-to-grave without free choice

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, January 24, 2015)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ He goes by a false name so he’s not found and killed. I just met him. I’ll call him Ahmed in this, his story. He recently shared it around our dinner table.

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The paradox of Christmas

1 Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / / , , , , , , , , , / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 20, 2014)

ISTANBUL, TURKEY ✦It was a Sunday, the first day of Advent, en route from Hamilton to my African home, when I toured the Old City here, a place where religions and cultures and empires have collided for centuries. This is when my guide for the day said what he did.

I had asked him about some historic notes and holy relics in the Topkapi Palace Museum, items identified as thousands of years old from ancient Israel, but looking dubiously more modern and Ottoman-like, when he told me as plainly as if he was giving the weather report that, “It’s all mythology anyway. Whatever you believe is true, that’s the truth.”

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