Today’s your birthday. Just one day.Just one day. That’s all it is. Just one day. That’s all it took. Just one day. To take you from us. Just one day. And a lifetime is gone. In just one day. Today, 16 January 2025, is Mack’s 21st birthday. Or would be, if […]
Mack
How long did Colin wear your shoesHow many miles walked, balls kicked, goals scoredIn your shoes?The soles came off before he gave them up. Who got your bike, new that Christmas?Did they ride it for days, up and down their streetOr hardly at allBecause it was always yours? She keeps […]
As readers of this blog know, Frederick Buechner and his works have been incredibly influential in my life over the last ten years so it was a gracious gift from Dr. Andrew Newell to allow me to contribute an essay for the Buechner Review. I confess that I fretted about […]
It is our nature to mark specific dates and times, not just the annual remembrance, but particularly those that seem somehow significant, whether numerically (5, 10, and so on) or personally, as when we passed the threshold when Mack had been gone from this world longer than he had been […]
My back was sore as I scrambled off the floor and the pile of wrapped presents to slide onto the couch and pick up my glass of port. I stretched and observed to Elizabeth that it has been a really challenging fall. There were three main challenges that I had […]
It is hard to believe that we are approaching nine years since Mack died, the threshold at which he will have been gone longer than he was with us, but the 9th Annual Mack Match was this past weekend, bringing that reality home to us. Reflections will take longer and […]
The 9th Annual Mack Brady Memorial Clinic was a great success! Elizabeth, Izzy, and I cannot thank our panelists enough for their gracious gift of time and their wonderful humor and candor in sharing about their journeys through youth soccer (play more than one sport!), tips about training at home, […]
This year has been a hard one for everyone and while we cannot meet in person, we will not miss our Annual Mack Brady Clinic! Even in this odd year, the Goalkeeper Union comes through to provide another clinic for aspiring keepers! It will be virtual, of course, but mark […]
This essay was written as part of the outreach program of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Lexington to continue to minister to our community in this time of uncertainty and “social distancing” that requires not meeting in person. For essays by my friends and colleagues go to “Calming the […]
The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Beautiful and Terrible Things: A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope. My father died on Maundy Thursday 2019. As my mother and I sat by my father’s bed in the ICU, we began to talk about plans for his funeral—not […]