Recent Columns

My children love to tell it, and told it again not long ago, this joke, laughing and tripping over themselves to the punch-line. It goes like this. There’s a scientist and God. And the scientist challenges God to a contest of who can make the better human being. God tells him that he’s on, at […]

We are children, all of us, not entirely at home in this world because in a deep place, maybe a forgotten place, we realize there is something else, something more. Which is why crimes against children are especially heinous: they’re an attack on the very nature of innocence. They’re also a reminder of how, in the […]

(The UCU Standard – Monday, September 23, 2013) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ The old Yiddish joke goes like this. ‘Do you know what makes God laugh? People making plans.’ This is the mystery of it, of the Gospel itself, really. Even our lives, fragile and short as they are, are not ours to over-script. No, we need to open them to possibilities outside ourselves, and when we do, surely good surprises will come along the way. It’s as true for any person as it is for an institution like UCU. I was reminded of this while around the dinner table – twice – during my family’s recent season back in North America.

It was all set, I was told. Chris had invited me over for the night. Which was fine, because Chris was a cool dude, a buddy with a sort of bowl-cut who lived just down the hill, and, after that, just up the hill. We loved to play hockey together, so much that once I […]

When the Light of the World talked about light, he made the plain observation that it’s not something to hide. No, we strike a match and light a lamp and put it high so that we don’t bump into the furniture. Of course, in Uganda, when the power goes out after dark, this can be […]

We work this out in fear and trembling. This is what he said to me. We work it out daily. He said this on the first day we met. He sat there, large, across from me, feet firmly on the ground, voice rich and steady. He told me he rolled out of bed every morning […]

As the story goes, she wanted to marry and she wanted to travel too, so she married a man who had a gazillion stamps in his passport — only to discover that he never wanted to move again. This is how it goes with so called Third Culture Kids, or TCKs, the term coined to describe […]

It’s a strange world, especially here on what is, for all I know, my deathbed. It’s malaria and I’m dreaming. Or maybe in the fight of it I’m actually hallucinating. I see a friend, a writing mentor, a bear of a man, the sort you can disappear into when he hugs you. He’s an American […]

It’s the height of summer but we’re at the rink anyway. It’s our last skate of the season. Liz is flying across the ice with her golden hair streaming behind. Hannah (her black Ugandan locks jammed under a black hockey helmet) is also going round and round, as is Jon, smile from ear to ear, telling […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, August 17, 2013) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It’s a strange world, especially here on what is, for all I know, my deathbed. It’s malaria and I’m dreaming. Or maybe in the fight of it I’m actually hallucinating. I see a friend, a writing mentor, a bear of a man, the sort you can disappear into when he hugs you. He’s an American who’s never been to Africa, no not once. But he’s somehow made it over the ocean and through the walls to kneel at my Ugandan bedside. ­“What are you doing here?” I ask. “I’m praying for you.”

It apparently came on the back of a friend’s truck down the Ontario highway from Hamilton to London. It was the day My Lovely Bride and I married. The item was an electric piano, the sort that, at that time, wasn’t so small. Even though I was handling most of the details of our wedding reception on that summer day, […]

(Christian Week - August 2013) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was a summer Sunday and communion was finished and so was the sermon and they stood, both of them, old and gray and a little stooped. And we all clapped for some time to say 'congratulations' and 'thank you,' too. This, in a Hamilton church, a moment to show that even after 60 years of marriage you can still stand as man and wife and smile at the world, and smile with the sort of lines that show old things like truth all over your face. It's something to think about as marriage hits hard times.

The conversation with my so mature 8-year-old boy went like this: Jon: Dad, when are you going to tell Hannah about the birds and the bees? Me: When she’s ready. Jon: When will that be? Me: When she’s ready. Then shortly later, the conversation, now with Jon and Hannah, all of seven, went like this. […]

The problem, he told me, is that not once was there any reference to sin or repentance and the entire message was so watered down that it was made simply too irresistible for the lukewarm to refuse. This, at a church picnic. The lament was from a minister who I have known for a long […]

(Hamilton Spectator – Friday, July 26, 2013) Love has always been one of those loaded words, one that means everything and nothing at the same time because we can love the latest Bond movie or country music or summer rain, but this has nothing to do with summer love at, say, a July wedding, or the love that shows on the faces of a couple who have sailed through thick and thin.