Christianity

(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.”

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, March 30, 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ I’m the odd man out in a loose circle in the campus home of the university president talking about God’s grace, an unsurprising discussion because, besides being a university and my own family’s home, this is a nearly century-old theological training centre. The horrible news of late is the roadside murder of a young law student, John Otim, beaten dead with an iron bar for money that he didn’t even have.

(Christian Week - April 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Jesus wept. Not long before he set his face like flint toward Jerusalem and the cross, he wept. Why? Surely he knew how it would all end, how he'd resurrect Lazarus, who lay nearby so cold and dead; how this miracle would foreshadow his own final triumph over the grave. Was he playing his audience? It's a scene with at least some strangeness. Here's another.

(The UCU Standard - Friday, November 1, 2013) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Suicide is a shabby and shameful business, something that nice people don’t get mixed up in, yet here they are, two suicides in our university family, two young people who in separate incidents have left us with nothing but a disturbing ‘good-bye.’

(Christian Week - February 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ There was an old man with a secret. And there was a police cruiser and fire truck and ambulance, large with red lights in the darkness in front of the man’s house. And my children held my hand and looked up and asked me questions. What could I say?

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Once there was a little Ugandan girl who loved school. The girl, who had been an orphan when she was younger, loved learning new things and making new friends and pretty well everything about it, especially the stories. Maybe she loved school all the more because of her years as an orphan, which started in a hospital in Mbarara, in western Uganda, where she was left abandoned when she was barely larger than a cat. There she was given all she ever owned, her name, Hannah.

We know little about them, these grandparents—if they came to babysit on Friday nights or if they maybe played checkers with the curly-haired, laughing boy while he grew in wisdom and stature.

There’s the guilt and fear. There’s the drama and emotion. There’s the conformity and the teaching of “Us versus Them.” Of course, there is also that feeling that you’re not good enough, that you have to somehow work your way into God’s love. These are hallmarks of cults, dangerous but strangely appealing religious groups like […]

Humble creativity will transform our culture for Christ.

So what would Jesus say? I mean about this debate on T-shirts that bear his name, and freedom of expression and religious tolerance and these sort of very Canadian things. The opinions have arrived in a crazy roll, thanks to the Grade 12 Nova Scotian suspended, then returned, then pulled from his school by his father, all because of his bold T-shirt that says “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

(Christian Week - December 10, 2010) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Two friends. One's confessing a secret. He's crying. Blubbering. Hyperventilating. "You'll be surprised," he says. "Don't worry," says his friend. "I know about things. Whatever you've done, you can tell me." "You'll be surprised," says the first. "No, I won't. Don't worry. Who is she? What's happened?" "You're making assumptions." "It's okay. Whatever you've done to her. Come on. Just tell me." "I'm gay." Silence. Disbelief. Embarrassment.

Your mother is dead. Divorce knocks. Your son is lost. It’s cancer. You’re laid off. You’ve broken up. The car crash. You can’t stomach it all. Trust?

Nearing the five-year mark of my family's foray into Uganda, here's a mind-bender from my happy and ever-inquisitive four-year-old, Jonathan: "Daddy, when you grow up, are you going to be dead?"

So it's that time of year when all of our New Year resolutions aren't yet broken. Among mine is to get into jail more often.

I discovered that this hugely popular novel, with sales now somewhere around a million, has caused a tempest in our community. And it's left me wondering: is it just me, or is something fundamentally and horribly amiss in our courtyard?