April 25, 2025
Feature
Stories
by Henry de Jong
and Sense de Jong
This is the story of our van der Laan reunion worship service, the summer of 2023, in the now abandoned Vennekerk, the church where my parents came of age.
Recent Posts
by Henry J. de Jong
Another Good Friday (4/18/2025) Herman de Jong’s prose story of “A Good Friday” has been with me for as long as he’s been gone — twenty-one years now. I wish I had known it before then, just as I wish I could have talked to him about it. …
Welcome to Middledom (2/25/2025) I’ve committed to buckling down for a while to translate and reissue the collected works of Herman de Jong in an accessible format and adding in what family histories I have. …
I am Indigenous (6/16/2024) The parallels between indigenous peoples, like those from Canada or northern Holland, are significant. …
City on a Hill (4/11/2024) I can never relive the experience of Amiens Cathedral, even after all the time I spent in its cavernous space that summer of 2023. …
Full Circle (4/28/2023) My father had no idea of his Reformed lineage; that his granddaughter would become a pastor and that he had generations of ‘dominees’ in his family. …
Young and Old Alike (8/10/2020) It was 50 years ago this month that the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) held its first Family Conference in Niagara, Ontario, on the August long weekend. …
The Nature of Things (1/23/2017) The photographs in this exhibition of objects from my mother’s home are equally happy accidents, revealing the nature of things …
Terschelling – A Place in the Heart (7/27/2010) Perhaps my father was lucky. There is a place in the world that he called his own. It’s a wonderful place that he could visit and remember and which never lost its essence throughout his own variegated life. That place is Terschelling …Recently Posted Stories
by Herman de Jong
Good Friday morning. I climbed
the spiraling, creaking stairs
to the organ loft,
young and inexperienced,
I needed to practice
for the evening service.
She is small and sturdy. He, tall and lean. Looking at him, you’d know that they are over-65s. They’ve been shopping here for years.
This story, by Herman de Jong, about a social visit and the troubles it deals with is full of humour and grace.
A Story by Herman de Jong about a McMaster university student finding peace and love on the island of Terschelling — his (and Herman’s) ancestral home.
On the edge of our bathtub is a little green elephant. It has stood there since the children were small. My wife keeps it there to hide the soap behind it.
Poems and Prose
by Herman de Jong
Sunday Morning
sit still! how could i have sat still
when all the colours of the rainbow
quite unexpectedly began to
wiggle through the church?
November
The road between Orangeville and Listowel
stretched ahead of me, endlessly. A fine drizzle obscured
Memoirs
by Ordinary and Extraordinary People
1916-1929: Managing the Renneborg
As we were eating in the backroom the next day, Mom suddenly appeared and said “Dad is dying”. So we crept quietly into the front room, where he laid in his bed, gasping for air and not knowing what was happening around him.
1912-01 Jan Stuit to H. Beekhuis
January 1912. from Jan Stuit to H. Beekhuis. [writing from Kalamazoo, Michigan at age 17, less than a year after emigrating] Beloved brother and sister, We received the sad tiding of the death of your dear little daughter and our niece, Tietje Beekhuis. I was very shocked by this tiding, because I remembered the wonderful […]