fear and anxiety

Letting go of fear, finding life’s sweet symmetry

Today’s rumination is about the flags of the world and the hope of the world and the fears of the world, (or at least some fears in Canada), even as it’s about how the children’s mother helped me get over some of my own fears. We live in a world that’s somehow naturally saddled with fear

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The good news about the bad news

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 20, 2016)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It’s funny how you can give a torch to someone and he’ll light up the world, and give the same torch to someone else and he’ll burn the place down.

It’s like love and hate. They’re both consuming fires, but with different ends. (The ultimate difference is that hate is all-consuming, and, like evil, will eventually consume itself.)

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Wrestling with angels

(Christian Week – May 2015)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was an unremarkable day, birds and the African sunshine, the sound of a distant lawnmower, the dog laying quiet in back, shoes nearby, tea, a half-eaten yogurt, when fear washed over me like a river. Nightmares, yes, can come anytime.

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Training the cats and loving our neighbours

It’s been a mad dash these days to pack up the house – again – for our annual return to Uganda. The plane flies this holiday weekend. One of the cats at our African home – she was a kitten not long ago – has apparently given birth in our absence. We’ve been sent video

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We’re told to love our neighbours

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 23, 2014)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ He needs a home with others. Assisted living. There are options in Hamilton. He needs one before he’s destroyed by his uncertainty and fear, his black as midnight darkness.

He’s not a star, not a celebrity, not, say, Robin Williams, whose suicide just shook us so deeply. He’s simply your neighbour. This is his story.

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Boogeyman paranoia where shadows lurk at every corner

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 17, 2014)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ There was a time when a neighbourhood school was a place that nourished your soul. It wasn’t that long ago. I’m not that old.

You’d go to play, say, baseball on Saturday morning or, in winter, hockey on the rink that your Grade 6 teacher lovingly flooded outside the row of windows where even the good students looked out to daydream.

It was a time when you’d walk to school every morning. By yourself. Even when the school bully – her last name was, fittingly, Greenall – went the same way. It somehow even brought out courage that you never knew you had.

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