Abraham's Journey
(On this Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, I repeat this story I wrote on my pilgrimage. Reading it again, I cried. It takes a few years before you can read a story you wrote from the perspective of actual reader rather than some weird sort of technician. My friends, God has a plan – […]
Read More The Pivot of CivilizationBy Charlie Johnston Thank you to everyone who was so kind to my family and me as we went through our bereavement at the loss of my dad. (Complete aside here – people often get confused at when to use ‘and I’ versus ‘and me.’ A simple way to know just from your ear what […]
Read More Milk BottlesWith all that’s been on Charlie’s plate in the last, nearly three, weeks, and with the continuing weightiness of what is happening around us – including the intensity many are experiencing with personal trials – it’s a good moment to revisit a piece filled with counsel which calls us to introspection and self-examination as we […]
Read More A Redux Brimming with Insight and WisdomBy Charlie Johnston The last week and a half have been eventful. The death of my father on Nov. 12 was not entirely unexpected, but it threw many things into both an emotional and a nostalgic tizzy. And now it is time for Thanksgiving. I have much to be thankful for. The next generation behind […]
Read More Thanks be to GodBy Charlie Johnston The election post-mortems seem to me like a bunch of geezers standing outside a burning house. One argues that it is because they left the kitchen faucet running; another that too many bedroom windows were left open; while a third sagely opines that the carpets hadn’t been vacuumed in over a week. […]
Read More Continuance DeniedBy Charlie Johnston In Massachusetts there is a relatively short river that has played an over-sized role in popular culture. Only seven miles long, it is the river that abolitionist Lydia Maria Child speaks of in her classic Thanksgiving song, “Over the River and Through the Wood.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s popular poem about Paul Revere’s […]
Read More The Mystic River Rolls OnBy Charlie Johnston My father died today. He had a mild injury and suddenly took a very bad turn for the worse last night. He passed at 11:45 am Eastern Time. I am heading south today to be with the family. I have not been able to get hold of my scheduler this morning, but […]
Read More Sorrowful NewsBy Charlie Johnston Since 2012 I have been badly wrong on what I expected to happen in three election cycles – 2012, 2018 and yesterday. That is about as many as I had my entire lifetime before that. Clearly, I do not have my finger on the pulse of who we are in this country […]
Read More Fundamentally TransformedBy Charlie Johnston I am very confident now that, whatever happens today (election day), it will be our first milestone in the renewal of the world. The sequence I have long spoken of when God wants to pull us back to Him after we have determinedly fallen away is to: 1) Reveal the depth of […]
Read More The First MilestoneBy Charlie Johnston ‘Twas the week before voting and all through the house, All the creatures were spinning, especially the louse, The ballot collection boxes set by the courthouse with care, While the lefties all prayed the Great Mule soon would be there… Ah, the week before an election like none I have ever seen […]
Read More Crises and Hope
A Sign of Hope 