If you ever find yourself in Johannesburg, South Africa, be sure to make your way to a little koppie, or small hillock, in the heart of the University of Witswatersrand campus. The city is built on hills, but this hill is special. It is home to the Origins Centre, where you can explore the fascinati

The plane touched down in Las Vegas. Neither my friend nor I had much of a clue about camping; so along with the tent, the sleeping bags and the backpacks, we had with us all kinds of things that might come in useful. We could hardly move beyond the carousel. In fact that Hercules transporter you ma

The graduation season is finally over. All over the country young people have completed their studies and received the diplomas that, they hope, will unlock a future of their choosing. In Britain the ritual of graduation involves the donning of graduation hoods and gowns (hired at great expense for

Global politics can sometimes have unexpected, and very local, side effects. I guess it’s a bit like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in the Indian Ocean and causing a tornado in Kentucky. Events that seem remote and impersonal can cause tidal waves in the lives of very small people.

Desire has a bad press. Most of us, at least those beyond a certain age, have grown up thinking that anything we desire is probably something we shouldn’t even be thinking about, and whatever God’s will might be, it is surely diametrically opposed to what we actually want.

Lent can be a disorienting, dislocating time, and sometimes it seems that it observes us more than we observe it. Twice recently I had the feeling that Lent was observing me and gently tweaking at my mind and heart, not without a smile on its face. The first of these moments happened in the middle o

I put my hand in the oven a few weeks ago and scorched myself on the heating element. In normal times this would have been just another domestic accidenta careless mistake for which my skin paid the penalty. But the times were not normal. I was in a dark space following the breakdown of a significan

The starlight had dimmed. The magic of the Magi had dissolved into the gray of a January work week. And it had been a long week. I was feeling quite tired as I climbed into the taxi that would take me on the first stage of my journey home from the retreat house where I had been working. I was also a

I still remember the day, back in 1953, when Mt. Everest was conquered. At the time there was great rejoicing, as Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing set the first human footsteps upon the virgin snows of the mountain’s peak. It was many years later that I heard the story of how differently the t

A light has gone out in the house next door. The elderly gentleman who lived there was a friend as well as a neighbor. A light in his porch always assured us that he was well. I really miss that light each night now as darkness falls. In some small way a light has gone out in the world too, because