one by one or in twos they arrive starting with family who are here early to make pancakes and watch little ones and then friends also start appearing friendly and awkward chatter takes place in multiple rooms of the house flapjacks are consumed coffee is made and then drunk with equal measures of passion scattered laughter from small groups of people who have not seen each other for a while of whiles and at some point [...]
i am generally inspired, amused, educated or enlightened by a number of posts on the internet any given week and link to them via the social medias. but the week time is busy for a lot of people and so you might find that you got to the end of it and missed out on some of the posts that otherwise might have interested you. so as i look back to this past week, here [...]
Last night, my wife Valerie [aka The Beautiful Val aka tbV] and i won the lottery. Now let me get this straight, i am not talking about the Dutch Lottery that i seem to win with alarming regularity [despite having never sent in any kind of entry or bought any ticket of any kind, but if it arrives in my email it must be true, right?] And i don't mean that time that kind old [...]
[Possibly as good a time as any to remind readers that while i don't necessarily agree with all the points made in every post that is published on my blog, i do believe that the conversation and engagement with pieces like this is absolutely invaluable and i think it is so helpful to know and understand why people around us are thinking what they are. If you agree or disagree with anything in this [...]
So yesterday i took a bit of a look at the idea of doubt from the perspective of being someone who is a follower of Jesus. Is it okay to doubt? Is doubt helpful? Should we be overly worried if there is a lot of doubt in our lives? Sadly, i was not able to arrive at a simple tick-the-box solution. This area seems to be a bit of a complex one. Which is okay. [...]
A while back someone asked me to write a blog post or series about Doubt and i already had this post's heading sitting in my draft box waiting to be written. So today i try to write it... ...and was doing really well... ...at least until i Uncle Googled what the bible had to say about doubt which totally threw my argument on its head. But let me share it anyway - maybe you're smarter than [...]
Not sure where this came from - possibly inspired by a few spoken word poets i follow on the Twitterer [@brettfisha] but was lying in bed this morning and suddenly started writing a poem on the Twitterer which means line after line of 140 characters or less, trying to make each line complete and full, while also creating a whole completed piece. This is what emerged: Deep breath. Reset. New day. New ways. To breathe [...]
I'm not sure how many people feel as strongly as i do about cellphones sometimes, although i sense 'Pearls before Swine' creator, Stephan Pastis, might have some idea. People driving while texting or speaking on their phones lately has really caused me an out of proportional rage reaction [or maybe not. maybe exactly the right amount of proportion. but it does tend to be the only time i swear loudly and aggressively, to myself, when [...]
Let me start with a bit of context: I'm not a dad, but I have a dad and I'm an uncle to four nieces, a nephew and a bunch of my friends kids. I'm also the godfather to three girls, two of which are my nieces. I regularly have the privilege of getting to babysit (look after) my niblings (the collective term for nieces and nephews) and I know that that doesn't make me a [...]
To be a Dad I’m heading towards 50, a father to a 19yo son Dylan, and an 18yo daughter Brynn. I lost my dad this year and I miss him terribly. I seem to have done a fairly good job of fathering my kids if other people’s unsolicited comments are anything to go by. There are a good few things I regret not having done, but very few I regret doing. Here are some of [...]