Assurance: A Complex Spiritual Experience
We look for the numbers, the tally of our success. How many new cases of COVID-19? The number of people who are in intensive care, who has recovered and, sadly, those who have died. Show us the graph....
Will My List Make Me Less or More Wonderful?
The empty tomb of Easter clearly shows in the rear view mirror. Hope renewed, new life has been proclaimed. What will the next age resemble? One month into the restricted movement phas...
Holy Saturday – Life in a Time of Disruptive Uncertainty
In the Christian year, the day between Good Friday, the day of the execution of Jesus, and Easter morning, the dawn of new life, is called Holy Saturday. Most often observed in the Roman Catholic trad...
Betrayal
Betrayal shatters trust like a rock through a picture window. And it often comes with little warning. Seemingly, in an instant, life, as assumed, dissolves. None of our responses to betrayal are ...
Faith Under Siege
My faith is under attack. While COVID-19 pummels the body, my soul feels under siege. My ability to trust strains under the load of all the things I do not know. Some days, some hours are better ...
Loss, Grief and Mourning
I remember the moment vividly.Dad was in Rose Wood, the care home that would be his final stop. He reached around to the back pocket of his green twill work pants to pull out the weathered, dog-e...
The Pursuit of Salvation
Caleb and I sit by the window in McDonalds, looking out at those who use the safe injection site in downtown Victoria. We haven’t connected for a few weeks so the conversation ranges over m...
Criteria for a Great Gift
Of the many Bibles I possess, one pocket-sized New Testament says, on the flyleaf, “from Grandpa Howard, Christmas 1955.” As a toddler, I can’t imagine a New Testament was my first choice for a g...
Angels We Have Heard on High
Hope is a big deal for me. Two reasons. One is a son whose continues to battle opioid addiction and for whom this season does not seem to hold much light. Grandchildren are the other. Both ...
What Do I Want for Christmas?
What do you want for Christmas? When my age could be captured by a single digit, the question would take weeks to answer. The pages of the Christmas catalogues from Eaton’s and Sears would become...