Magical Memoir Moments
An Antidote to GrandSlump: Those Simple Little Pleasures
Perhaps you have seen this neologism from my friend Kerry Byrne: If you have grandchildren, and were lucky enough to have them all together, or even in stages, over the holidays, you know how grandslump feels. I do. After the children and grandchildren gather up their luggage and head for the car, and we have…
A Letter to Our Grandchildren about Peace, Courage, Love, Justice, Kindness and Loyalty
Dear reader, we are still writing the letter below to our grandchildren. They haven’t seen it yet. We invite you to pretend you are almost 12, or 10 (we chose to write to the developmental level of the older two. The younger one, age 5, will want to be right in there with them but…
Our Sacred Texts: What Will Your Spiritual Legacy Be?
I am writing this post from New York City. For the last four days we have been exploring the place that we called home in 2011-2012, traveling with friends from Goshen, Indiana. One of the highlights was returning to Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship where I preached a sermon called “Loving Our Children’s Children.” I was rather…
Five Suggestions for Cousin Camp or Grandparent Camp This Summer
The phrase “summer vacation” puts a smile on every kid’s face. Grandparents also love summer, because chances are the vacation plans might include them! We had three days of continuous celebration of summer here in Lititz when our son’s family from Tulsa and our daughter’s family from Lancaster were united at our house. I’ve been…
Make a Comforter. BE a Comforter. Comforters for Ukraine
My Grandma Sue Snyder Hershey, pictured on the left below, looked like this when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. My widowed great-grandmother, her mother, stands like the prow of a ship in front of her four adult children. I thought a lot about my grandmothers and great-grandmother as I was writing…
How Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Norbert Krapf Helped Me to Become a More Mindful Grandparent
Did you watch the Nobel Prize ceremony in 2016 when Patti Smith sang “It’s a Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” in honor of her friend Bob Dylan? If not, you need to watch it here. And if you are one of the three million people who have already watched this video, trust me, it’s worth another…
Location, Location, Location: Choosing It and then Exploring it
Q: What are the three most important things about choosing a new home? A: Location, location, location. Why did we choose Warwick Woodlands? There are, after all, dozens of other retirement communities in Lancaster County, PA. In 2018, in fact, U.S. News & World Report ranked Lancaster County as the #1 retirement destination in the…
Living a Dream: Owning A Bookstore
How many people living in a big city dream of getting away from it all, moving to a small town, and setting up a shop? How many harried professionals wish they could buy books, read books, and talk to customers every day? How many parents of young children wish they could go into a family…
Porch Culture: Where Architecture and Hospitality Meet
A few mornings ago, I stepped out my front door here in Warwick Woodlands, and there was neighbor Donna talking to neighbor Anna over the porch railing. Just the sight of them gave me a pleasant little frizzon — that “electric feeling behind the navel” that informs me that something profound is speaking to me….
“Whatever Happened to That Book You Were Going to Write?”
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that I wrote a prayer on February 15, 2020, asking for guidance and strength as I undertook a new book-writing project. I had no idea that a month later the whole country would be closed down due to a pandemic. Nor could I have…