Blog
Vennekerk 2023 (4/25/2025) 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. …
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 …