It has been over 5 weeks since Mack passed and while I have posted about one or two other items besides our grief I think you can understand why it is a topic that will be with us for a while. Perhaps the hardest aspect of grieving is that there […]
Lamentations
One of the many books on grieving that have been sent to us is a slim little volume Good Grief by Granger Westberg. It is an excellent, brief summary of the various stages of grief that most of us go through, with particular emphasis upon the role of faith in grieving. […]
It is so odd how we count time. If we go by weeks, then it was four weeks ago this past Monday night that Mack died, December 31st. If we go by days on the calendar then today, January 31st, is the one month mark. Our friend and fellow Celtic […]
Gently, light and fluffy, the snow is falling. It hasn’t been much, just an inch or two. Mack loved snow, loved to play in it, sled, dig into it building forts. He would have been out already, even as I write at 7 am. But he wouldn’t have liked this […]
My wife asked my yesterday why I kept thinking and talking Job. It is because it is the locus classicus of human suffering and the demand for divine explanation. Today I wondered, “Are we cursed like Job?” Then I wondered, was he cursed or just human, experiencing life with all its loss and […]
This past week my close friend and mentor recommended to me Charles Williams’ War in Heaven. Williams is the member of the “Inklings” that most of us forget about, but whom many consider to be the best theologian of the bunch. (I am on record as attributing that crown to […]
I just want to reassure readers that while there will undoubtedly be more posts about my (and our, but I tend to let my wife speak for herself) experiences and thoughts grieving for the loss of our son, the blog Targuman will not become solely about theodicy. When I began […]
It has barely been over one week since our wonderful boy died. It was fast, sudden, and completely unexpected. It was not an accident or a prolonged illness, but rather a bacterial infection of the blood. We are thankful for the small grace that he was in very little pain […]
This past weekend was spent doing various work around that house that required lots of hours and very little thought. Good for the soul, perhaps, but I feel like I lost two days in a wormhole. I missed offering my best wishes for a good observance on Tisha b’Av, so […]
The Seven Last Words of ChristThe Fourth Word Matt. 27:45 From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 46 And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” […]