We prayed the Lord’s Prayer every school day, in my elementary public school classrooms. I still hear the voices of my classmates, heads bowed, hands folded. Holly Parker, always the class rebel, likely peeked and passed notes to Larry McKay. (Okay, I peeked at least once.) “Teach us to pray,” …
Tradition. That’s why Ezra, aged six years and eight hours, sits at our table, eying his breakfast: a vast bowl of Neapolitan ice cream. He chose that yesterday in the store, over my suggestions of more sophisticated options. “How about maple walnut? Black cherry? Rocky road?” But, no. He had …
We really do need each other. God made us that way. Genesis records that when he created the world and nature, he called it good. Yet, after creating Adam, he said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and immediately created Eve. Because of COVID, most of us …
Honestly. Sometimes when I sit down to write my weekly column I feel guilty. Our shattered world needs infinitely more than I offer. But there I go, every week for more than twenty years now, flinging out my five-hundred words to a few gracious readers. That’s you, there. Unfolding your …
On the night before Christmas of 2019, I sat in a cozy corner by our slender lit tree. Minutes earlier I’d stood in the backyard, waiting for our shaggy sheepdog, Cash, to finish his business, and feeling particularly UNfestive. After the hype leading to the 25th, the harried schedule, decorating, …
COVID-19, with all its adjustments, terrors and sorrows will pass in time. Remember how difficult things were at the start of the pandemic panic, when everyone learned we must keep our distance from anyone not in our own household? Early in 2020, after the Preacher and I moved nearby them, …
One day, God willing and should the earth last so long, our grandchildren will tell their children that they lived through COVID-19, just as elderly survivors of other pandemics and deadly diseases, have spoken of it to their children and grandchildren. Stories of hardship, of fear and faith and frailty. …
An embarrassing truth confronts us all. We first-world emperors have no clothes after all. Reassurances of our own lordship, the thoughts that have clothed most of us for most of our lives (we are what we make of ourselves, unconquerable, masters of our own destiny, no God necessary) have toppled …
Whatever the circumstances, sings Canadian musician Big Dave McLean, in his gravelly, Louis Armstrong-ish voice, “there will always be a change.” A friend didn’t expect her perfect grandchild to be stillborn. An acquaintance didn’t realize that following her simple biopsy procedure, she’d get a call to go directly to emergency. …
We’re twenty percent moved, and one hundred percent befuddled. Despite knowing we must continue with our great downsizing, reducing the contents of a two-storey home to what best fits a one-storey (about half the size) has all the appeal of major surgery without anaesthetic. Our stow-n-go van and my car …
