Abraham's Journey
By Charlie Johnston Our community lost one of its charter supporters and friends to begin Lent. Anne Baker passed away at 101 in the assisted living facility where she had been in Florida for the past couple of years on the morning of Ash Wednesday. Anne was the mother of our dear friend and chief […]
Read More TransitionsBy Charlie Johnston I spent most of my life in various parts of the often-frozen northern states of Illinois and Colorado. Right now, I am housebound in Texas…not out of any infirmity, but because we had a decent ice and snowstorm outside. I chuckle because, objectively, what we got (about an inch and a half […]
Read More Thoughts From the Texas TundraBy Charlie Johnston I fretted a LOT before I published my last piece, Training for Trust. I could feel the desperate, crying need from so very many people who were dealing with agonizing personal and family issues. Many of those suffering are people I, personally, like and admire. I often use examples from my own […]
Read More Fire From Above – Candid Self-AssessmentBy Charlie Johnston Years ago, when I was visiting Alabama, I went to visit my sister at a Farmer’s Co-Op where she worked as assistant manager. When I got there, they were frantically busy; four registers open and at least three deep waiting at each. My sister had come out to run a register during […]
Read More Training for TrustBy Charlie Johnston I first posted the following article on November 20, 2015. I wrote the first version of this particular introduction to it in late 2023, right after the Hamas massacre of Israeli concert-goers. I caught a lot of flack for it, despite a certain delicacy in my candor. We were long governed by […]
Read More A Year of Reckoning for IslamBy Charlie Johnston (It is Christmas…the Advent Season is over, yet I think it begins the second “week” of the New Advent. I wrote this story 29 years ago. It had an unexpected effect that has been very useful to me over the years. People of deep and ardent faith seem to always love the […]
Read More The Beginning of RedemptionBy Charlie Johnston (I think a lot, these days, of looking back to the manger with the hopeful anticipation that Israel looked forward to the manger. We are almost there for this great celebration this year. What a joy it is! I can’t help but think of it as prelude to 2026, the Year of […]
Read More Almost ThereBy Charlie Johnston I have always been a big believer in what I call “First Things,” foundational principles which you then use as your interpretive template on all extrapolations. (Imagine my delight when, in 1990, the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus founded First Things Magazine – a profoundly orthodox Judeo-Christian publication that often has profound intellectual […]
Read More Get the First Principles Right…and All Else will Flow ClearlyBy Charlie Johnston It is a peculiarity of modern life that a lot of people have a very superficial knowledge about many things, but no depth of knowledge on anything. Then we have cohorts who have extreme depth of knowledge on certain niche subjects (usually technology) but little general knowledge beyond that. Weirdly, this combination […]
Read More Cast Out Into the DeepBy Charlie Johnston Long ago I saw that, at a decisive moment, our technology would fail. I’m no Luddite. I do not regard technology as either intrinsically evil or intrinsically good. It is just a tool which, like any other tool, can be wielded by its user for either good or evil. But we withhold […]
Read More Prepare For a Great Blessing
A Sign of Hope 