Relationships

(The UCU Standard – Monday, September 23, 2013) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ The old Yiddish joke goes like this. ‘Do you know what makes God laugh? People making plans.’ This is the mystery of it, of the Gospel itself, really. Even our lives, fragile and short as they are, are not ours to over-script. No, we need to open them to possibilities outside ourselves, and when we do, surely good surprises will come along the way. It’s as true for any person as it is for an institution like UCU. I was reminded of this while around the dinner table – twice – during my family’s recent season back in North America.

If I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today, it's this: Look forward with great hope to the day you marry and have children.

Adultery is something I've never really thought about much. But the papers here in Uganda are full of it: adultery is no longer a crime.

Good grief. Just when you thought you knew the rules around here, where it's a given that cultural change is painfully slow, along comes a curve ball that really makes your head spin.

Clearly the marriage gods were telling me something. Your marriage is something very noble. Don’t blow it. Because, yes, it also has the potential to burst into flames.

Chronic illiteracy in Yemen reflects the belief that teaching a woman to read will empower her at the expense of men.

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA ✦ I love my daughter, all 15 months of her, for many reasons. One is that she’s more like her mother than me. Especially while flying. My wife Jean and I continue to be aid workers in the Middle East and Africa, so this is often. In fact, diaper-clad Elizabeth Katherine has already been on more than dozen flights and four continents. The Squirt knows one word. Just one. It’s “hello.” But words can be powerful things.

We're reading the papers in the heart of Africa and this is what we see: How a woman's derriere needs the right jeans. Photo included. A cartoon of a married fellow who'd rather give up drinking than sex on the side. And a story about boda-bodas — the motorcycle- taxis everyone here uses — and how ladies of the night like to proposition drivers while on board. One driver says he gets headaches if he refuses.

It's Valentine's Day. Great fun. Two years ago today, I proposed to Jean. Her ring was presented in a restaurant, with the help of the official town crier, his booming voice, clanging bell and scroll. Moments later, along with thousands of others in London, Ont., we heard about our upcoming "royal wedding" on the radio.

(LONDON FREE PRESS, June 2, 1998) ST. THOMAS, CANADA – Regarding, Male spirituality about partnerships (May 17), Free Press assistant city editor Larry Cornies shows it's easier to criticize the evangelical Christian men's movement Promise Keepers than it is to understand it.