My child, my gift, my life. Would I have been in church that Sunday morning if I was them? Or any Sunday? Is it reasonable to acknowledge God as good when life has dealt you a blow that almost crushes you every day? The Mom was seated a few rows ahead of me. As the…
Issues in Life
Nostalgia on life
Wednesday evening – something for everyone. Our home is likely similar to yours. Favourite television programs each week are pre-recorded for leisurely fast-tracking through commercials. Wednesday evening for us is a downer if the three Chicago programs (Med, Fire, PD) don’t offer a new episode. A fine example of high-level negotiation, my wife and I…
How do you shed the crown?
When I finished Who made you King? (July 8, 2026), I realized I had only scratched the surface of the topic’s relevance to my own life. The trail is long and littered with my self-contained decisions. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I had stayed single and responsible only to myself. But I didn’t. And…
Who made you King?
Spoiler alert. I will be ‘bashing’ men in this reflection. It is unapologetically one-sided. The emoting is my own and not a summary of stuff from the internet (other than a few statistics). If you don’t care for where this is going, please abort now. As time passes, I am increasingly turned off common distasteful…
My name is Jay
I met Jay at Walmart parking lot on a cold winter morning. Just outside the entrance door as I was going in. The funnel hood on his parka, rolled all the way forward, pushed a ring of long unruly hair out the front that largely hid his face from view. And made him look pretty…
“Friennds”
“Friennds. Friennds.” Her soft, plaintive cry hardly penetrated the stillness of the morning. Five-year-old Amy stood at the end of the driveway and looked both ways. “Friennds. Friennds.” Amy’s family had just moved to their new house. She had to leave all her friends behind but her parents assured Amy there would be new ones…
Dying for Love
Themes of love and death. These are pervasive in the arts throughout history. Poets, philosophers, novelists have wrestled with the human disposition towards ‘dying for love,’ ‘dying to self for love,’ ‘dying to love.’ The nuances in these phrases reveal the complexities of human relationships. Dying for love. Does this mean dying figuratively because of…
It’s never too late . . .
Meet my friend Henry. I can say ‘friend’ even though I met him just recently at the gym. He’s the kind of guy I want as a friend. 93 years old. Pushes his walker at a good c lip as he enters the gym with determined focus. Heads straight to the first of his three…
Juxtaposition – a lesson from the ‘Up’ movie
A need for definition. Juxta = next to. Pose = to place. Juxtapose = to place next to. ‘Juxtaposition’ describes a situation where two elements that don’t seem to belong together are placed side by side. The contrast heightens emotional impact, creates irony, conveys a clash of realities, and engages the reader, viewer, or listener…
“If only . . .” or “At least . . .”? – the power of regret
The face tells the story. It was the women’s individual cycling road race at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Anna van der Breggen (center) won gold “by the width of a tire.” Emma Johansson (on left) got silver. And Elisa Borghini (on right) came in third for bronze. At the finish line,…