Writing about yourself can feel a tad awkward. And yet, if you don’t know any of my backstory, why would you care to read my content? In the end, who we are is what really matters. And it strikes me how our personal perspectives – how we see or think and feel about different things – are largely shaped by our identities. How we relate to things depends a great deal on who and what we are related to, where we come from, and all the ways we are formed by all those things, our whole lives really.  

The old people got this. “Can you see where I’m coming from?” they would say when they wanted to make sure they were being understood.

On that note, I am Canadian, born and raised. You’ve got to like that, eh! I was born in Nova Scotia in my parent’s kitchen on the dusty Carrobie Road in August of 1959. And I have lived within 3 miles of that spot pretty much all my life. Country living has been my lot and “the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” I like to say I grew up in the hundred acre wood because that was the size of the old farm I was raised on – a farm that was mostly woodlot. I grew up country and I find myself profoundly connected to place. I feel God has placed me here.

Growing up, the fields and forest were my playground. The last things I wanted to be doing was sitting, reading, studying, or writing. Not because I didn’t think a lot. But hockey (and pretty much every other sport) was way more interesting than any book or piece of paper. My scholastic activities in those days consisted of doing just enough to get by (in those days you repeated grades when you didn’t progress through the curriculum and you could get kicked out of grade 4 for not shaving … just half kidding)..

I lacked both direction and motivation. My teen years were tumultuous and involved numerous wrong paths and dead ends. Enough said.

When I was 21 I came to know Christ. And I got married to a woman with three young children. All in the same year! Ask me about it sometime. I don’t mind sharing the story. Just not now.

As I write this I am sixty-six. You could say that’s old. I prefer seasoned. Just over a year ago I retired after pastoring for thirty-six years in the church where I went to Sunday School as a kid. So, almost every week for the last 40 years I have done crazy amounts of the very things that I thought when I was young and growing up would be the last things I would ever be doing – sitting, reading, studying, and writing (not enough praying). And speaking too. I have never had a problem expressing myself, but public speaking is a bit different isn’t it.   

Did I mention I’m retired? Retiring from pastoral ministry is not much like retiring from pretty much most things. When people say, “So, you’re retired. How’s that going?” I typically respond with some type of qualifier like – “I’m officially retired.” Because I am trying to give myself (and others) time to figure out what this is supposed to look like.

Actually, this website is part of that I guess. The content here is all part of my story.  

I don’t have an agenda. I mean not a personal one. It’s just a place to write, regardless of who might read it. What you see if you look around this site are perspectives shaped by where I come from and where I find myself these days, the world as I know it, looking out, looking back, looking up, and looking forward. There’s a brightness on the horizon.

PS. You won’t find AI generated material here. Just saying.