family 133

Here, on a little patch of field in a North Texas suburb, I found life being played out in simple but significant ways.

Wallie is gone; no visible scar remains. Mourning provides no lesson, no answers, no closure. The poet is not decrying grief for its lack of utility.

Men often reflect on their relationship with their fathers during these coincidences of milestones; a similar thing often happens when a son reaches the age his father was when the…

The healthy sorrow of our most melancholy president

And so the shotgun sits in our home like a quiet benediction. It dreams—as I do—of long walks in the valleys of my youth and whispers of future pastures that…

Our mothers and our children will always be part of our lives, in life and death. Surprisingly, grief does not dominate our existence, it informs it.

Reading for the shape of a life can be medicinal, especially when we allow that life to diagnose and heal ourselves. And maybe then that understanding can encourage doctors of…

What We Can Learn from a Society Where Community Still Matters

This is the story of a bruised soul touched by grace but still frustrated by the passivity that others continue to show in response to the unspeakable.

After a pandemic took his son, the Bard would never be the same

No home but the Garden was there originally for man, once upon a very long time ago. No garage either was part of life before expulsion from Eden.

“Adonai has compassion,” sang the psalmist, “for he understands how we are made, he remembers that we are dust.” Perhaps in our dust of grief, we see clearly for the…

If an invisible world is a reality, then a creator is probable, as the deists suggest, and perhaps even plausible. God may well be really real, just as I had…

If we fail to recognize friendship for what it is, and for the role it plays in the maturation process of children and young adults, we lose out on a…

Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower found solace in their dead son’s favorite color

Walk boldly. Whistle not, but do keep walking. Keep walking right on by it and let the dead bury the dead.

A Cain and Abel Story for Modern Man

Theodore Roosevelt never recovered from the loss of his son in WWI

Surviving the holiday without our loved ones

It’s a new year, and many of us are thinking about self-improvement. This is a wonderful thing to do. We all need a bit of a tune-up now and then.…

I wish environmentalists would better understand that there are no mustache-twirling billionaires drilling and digging and burning oil just for the hell and the money of it. Like money, petroleum…

Tabletop games put something in our twitchy, swipe-hungry fingers other than a digital device—a hand of cards, a pair of dice, a plastic Zeus. And since others have put down…

Out-of-sight, out-of-mind is the quintessential modern American problem-solving strategy, and it sure does have a lot going for it, when it comes to dealing with our problem of stuff—that other…

The overall message is: here, readers, we have discovered a whole new mysterious island filled with these strange savages, previously unexplored. You wouldn’t believe what they’re doing out there! So…