soulfulness

Children and hope at one crossroads or another

She’s a scholar of the Old Testament and her reading glasses sit on her nose, and then she takes them off, and then they’re on again, and she’s talking about hope and my son Jonathan is here in the group of adults because he has asked if can stay. The rest of the seven-year-olds, known […]

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A Father’s Day letter to my daughter – Faraway home is where the heart is

Ten  years ago, in June 2003, my daughter Elizabeth Katherine was born. My life as a father began. And life changed, forever. I immediately wrote about it all, what I thought fatherhood might be about, especially as a travelling family with a foot in two worlds. The Hamilton Spectator published those thoughts at that time. Below is a

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Going home

One day, maybe, science will measure just what exactly happens to the deepest part of our beings when we go home — what happens not just to our emotions, but what happens physiologically in our organs, in our cells, in our very molecular makeup when we go to the place where we belong. I don’t mean

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Bubble-wrapped children in rubberized parks

We’re at the park that I built across from our house http://www.thomasfroese.com/find-the-unexpected-playgrounds-in-your-life/ She approaches me slowly and notices that I’m having a quiet moment. I’m at the picnic table under the canopy, beside the jungle gym, over from the trampoline. It’s a moment of calm that I like to have in the mornings. She has

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Find the unexpected playgrounds in your life

It was Sunday morning. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. Not very conversant in English, he said something that I eventually understood – he was clearing bush to make room to park a car. ‘Oh,’ I said. The space was across from our house here at the university in Uganda. The house itself, built on

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I love to work at Nothing all day

There is an art to doing Nothing. You can’t really try to do Nothing. The very act of trying means you’ll do a rotten job on it all. This is one of the reasons I love Hannah. Because of all the book characters that she could have been today, she chose Winnie the Pooh, the

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‘Excuse me. May I help you?’

Unlike Maple Crest, where I started my school career as a very blonde and very skinny boy, the middle school I attended, Burleigh Hill, is still standing. During the two years I attended Burleigh Hill, I would go from my house along roads like Townline and Rowntree, past the Stop and Go corner store to

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