On a visit to my aunt and uncle as a teenager, one day I was left to babysit my two young cousins.
Tag Archives: Childhood
Embracing the Child, Part Six: Acquiring a Child’s Heart
Currently I’m at work on a novel—a sci-fi/fantasy about angels and aliens—and while writing this essay I noticed that my story actually contains all the gateways to childhood that I’ve been describing.
Embracing the Child, Part Five: The Childhood of Faith
If childlikeness were a country, it would have many border crossings.
Embracing the Child, Part Four: Recovering Our Childhood
When my daughter was four years old I caught her standing on a chair and reaching up into the medicine cabinet to get a bottle of pills. Is this a picture of you?
Embracing the Child, Part Three: Join the Infantry!
There was a time in church history when the highest service one could offer the Lord was to be a Soldier of Christ.
Embracing the Child, Part Two: Fear of Ice Cream
My first trip overseas was to London, where I drank in the sights and sounds, the cobbled laneways and old buildings, the galleries upon galleries, like a man who had just crawled out of the desert.
Embracing the Child, Part One: Weary Willy’s Smile
Happy 2024! How better to greet this new year than with a reflection on childhood—or more specifically, on childlikeness?
Saint Dave: Memories of a Childhood Friend
My childhood friend, Dave Raymond, died at 67, having spent his last decade struggling with a rare neurological disorder called Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), which gradually destroys a person’s ability to understand language. When Dave finally lost all ability to communicate either with spoken or written words, he became a prisoner in his own body.
Prevenient Grace: A Visit to Brockville
In my mid-40’s I returned for the first time, after 25 years away, to my hometown of Brockville, Ontario.
My Favorite Christmas Gift: The Power of Memory
On December 25, after watching that classic movie “A Christmas Story,” I sat with my family sharing stories about the best Christmas gifts we’d ever received.