Abraham's Journey
By Charlie Johnston (This piece originally appeared on December 4, 2017 at The Next Right Step. It is moderately edited for content here, but I thought its themes are important in these times. I used to get frustrated that people were so certain that they knew what was going to happen that I feared many […]
Read More Fractured ExpectationsBy Charlie Johnston When I was a kid I used to gaze in wonder at cinematic depictions of lynch mobs. I just couldn’t get my mind around the idea that people could get so maliciously crazy that they wanted blood instead of justice…or that they hated someone so much that they didn’t care if he […]
Read More Ask Not for Whom the Lynch Mob Comes: It Comes for TheeFor those who may not be aware or who have not had the opportunity to view it, Charlie was interviewed by Fr. Richard Heilman and Doug Barry of the US Grace Force. Everything about this video is delightful and heartening, filled with signs of hope. Kick back and enjoy, Friends! I L.O.V.E. the title of […]
Read More Our Charlie with the US Grace ForceBy Charlie Johnston In the weeks before Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow, the aristocratic and military grandees of Russia both shined and stank like the proverbial rotten mackerel in the moonlight. Ambitious young grandees and lieutenants schemed against their superiors (and betters) hoping to usurp their authority by sliming them. Self-absorbed, arrogant little snots either did […]
Read More Lazarus, Come Forth!(I repeat today what has become an Easter Tradition for me – my little story about Pontius Pilate and the Lord. Some, over the years, have commented on how real the death scene feels. I took it almost verbatim from an actual event I participated in. What follows is fiction. I used the literary […]
Read More EpitaphBy Charlie Johnston I drove from west central Illinois today up to the Chicago area. It was pleasantly nostalgic to be driving roads I had driven hundreds of times before. I passed by places where we had had picnics and gatherings in my political days – and a memorable debate site. Passed through Galesburg, where […]
Read More Letter to a FriendBy Charlie Johnston I hit the wall on Wednesday this last week. Utterly exhausted after getting into St. Louis, I realized I hadn’t taken a full day off for over a month and a half. Back when I was running big campaigns, I was pretty insistent that the candidate should take at least one day […]
Read More Hitting the WallBy Charlie Johnston (I have been very enthusiastic about my visits and talks this year. People are focused, serious, and ready to get active. Some have wondered why I seem so generally enthusiastic about the way the country is going. Quite bluntly, I am astonished at how rapidly and determinedly the pagan left is destroying […]
Read More Through a Glass DarklyBy Charlie Johnston A quarter of a century ago, fearful of my capacity to confront the challenges I saw on the distant horizon, I resolved to work to banish sin from my life. When I told my original spiritual director, the one I call Towering Intellect, he looked at me in absolute exasperation. “I thought […]
Read More The American Iron CurtainBy Charlie Johnston Whatever happened to cabooses? I noticed while driving in the Midwest that I almost never see cabooses at the end of a freight train anymore. There is always only the last car in a train. When I was a kid, I saw cabooses at the end of almost every freight train. Maybe […]
Read More From the Vortex of the Swirling Gyre
A Sign of Hope 