Recent Columns

The year was 1912 and the newspaper ad was from the London Times and it went like this: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return is doubtful.” This, from a more heroic age when men would bet everything they had, even their lives, on […]

My Bride and I are on a plane in a few hours flying back to the kids in Uganda, from Korea, this land of hand-helds and sliding doors, from the west side of Korea while a typhoon comes from the east, something our travel agent and the news have both warned us about. But our Korean […]

My Bride has just finished her address to some hundreds at this conference near Seoul, 10,000 km from home and the kids. It will be my turn later. We’re in the company of a couple of senior Korean doctors. Both are legendary in the Korean medical world. The younger one, a thin-faced 91-year-old, likes to […]

(Christian Week - October 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ The thing about marijuana is that it stinks up the joint and brings images of barefoot hippies and stoner movies and general rebellion, none of which is very attractive to the clean-cut religious crowd. The sorry thief on the cross? A pot smoker no doubt. Probably a dealer. But the times, they are a changin’.

So, we sold the kids to go to Korea. Don’t know what that means for a blog called The Daily Dad, but it can’t be good. My Bride and I are invited to speak at a medical missions conference – she’s a keynote, I’m an addendum – by a Korean doc colleague we worked with […]

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.”