Today, Ken Knickerbocker and I are trading posts. Ken generously provides the residents of Parkesburg, Pennsylvania (which is where my wife and I reside) with “Parkesburg’s News and Happenings” at his website, Parkesburg Today, fulfilling a much needed service to our community. On May 1st of this year Ken suffered the loss of his father. I’ve […]
I’m a funeral director. Have been for the past 10 years. And during those ten years, I’ve helped numerous families memorialize miscarriages and still born babies. As a male who often finds himself in that “insensitive” category, I used to secretly wonder why there’s a desire to memorialize those not yet born. After all, what’s to memorialize? […]
This past week we had a funeral for a 23 year old whose alcohol problems caused an untimely death*. During the funeral — which was one of the more powerful funerals I’ve ever worked — the mother of this young man somehow mustered the strength to read the following poem. I don’t know who wrote the poem, […]
Doubt and silence play a major role in the history of the Church; a role, that for the most part, has been written out of the Protestant and evangelical story. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the method through which they look at theology is called “apophatic theology”, which is contra Western style of theology in […]
Ryan McGinnis has wrestled hell a couple times. He also has a man beard. I’m talking about the kind of beard that could be trimmed for Locks of Love and made into a head piece for a Jewish guy who has alopecia universalis. Ryan has also had a few kick boxing matches with both depression and […]