In November 2014 I returned from my African home to speak at the Hamilton Convention Centre on the theme of The Nature of Peace. This was on the invitation of the YMCA of Hamilton-Burlington-Brantford, which holds an annual Peace Medal Breakfast to honour the people of Hamilton region who work towards peace. Following is […]
The Nature of Peace – Complete address Read More »
(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.
Better than wine. Stronger than death. Read More »
Last week I was at a pool in Uganda doing my lanes. And most of the time when I swim in Uganda this particular pool is empty because Ugandans don’t swim. But this day there was a little girl there – she looked about 10 years old – and she was trying to learn to swim and she came up to me in the water and said, “Okay. I’ll climb on your back and you’ll swim and carry me and I’ll kick.”
The Nature of Peace – 4 – Understanding risk Read More »
Before My Babe came into my picture I had a dating life and, of course, she had also dated some guys before I sort of tripped into her world. (In fact sometime after the fact, My Babe told me that the wedding she had asked me to attend with her, the key date that changed
On love and prayer outside of Eden Read More »
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ You’ve worked hard for this your whole life, this, your university career, your education and future, your dreams of a better life. Then it happened. You made a mistake. Now you’re pregnant. You’re pregnant while at a religious university.
You know what happens next. You get thrown out. Everything will be gone. Your hard-earned tuition and your honour and your hope for tomorrow too, all lost. So you got that abortion.
Universities should help pregnant students Read More »
(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.
It’s a privilege to be a father Read More »
(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.
Uganda is Gay Ground Zero thanks to fear, politics and misguided religiosity Read More »
(Christian Week – March 12, 2014)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ By now you’ve heard plenty about Uganda’s new toughened laws on homosexuality, the news that spread to the West with the fanfare of a dark sporting event.
Even short of jail—terms range from seven years to life—it’s a new day of survival in a horrible state-sanctioned chill.
Several weeks in, like so many things in developing nations, it’s hard to know all that’s happening. Was that murder really a robbery gone bad? And that street beating? Why did she really lose her job? Many things simply don’t make the news here in Uganda.
Love is our highest calling Read More »
