Latest Reflections
Stories of faith, memory, Scripture, and the quiet ways grace meets us in ordinary life.
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The Boy Who Stayed Behind at Lunch
There are moments in family history that seem small at first glance, ordinary little happenings tucked into the folds of daily life, but years later you realize they reveal an entire world that no longer exists. My Grandpa Svagera’s first days at school in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, were one of those moments. Not long ago, I…
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“To Drink and Dance With One Hand Free”
S velikou láskou dědečkovi a tetičce The dance that overflowed the heart. There are some relationships in families that seem almost providential. Not accidental or merely biological, but deeply woven together by memory, history, sacrifice, and love. That was the relationship between my Grandpa Svagera and his youngest sister, Millie. Grandpa was the oldest sibling.…
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Under The Linden Tree of Memory
Imagining Grandpa Svagera Returning to the Land of His Father There are moments in life that seem almost too sacred to put into words. Not dramatic moments or loud moments, simply quiet ones that somehow carry the weight of generations. I often find myself imagining what my Grandpa Svagera must have felt the first time…
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The Sacred Role of the Firekeeper
I recently came across a beautiful idea found among some Native American traditions. In certain tribes, those entrusted with remembering the stories, histories, genealogies, and sacred memory of the people were sometimes referred to as firekeepers. The image has stayed with me ever since. A firekeeper was not merely someone who tended literal flames. The…
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How the Czech Language Carried a People Through History
There are nations built upon borders and there are nations built upon armies.And then there are nations like the Czechs, a people who, for centuries, survived because they carried their nation inside their language. For the Czech people, perhaps more than almost anywhere else in Europe, the writer became the nation. When governments disappeared, kingdoms…
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Maybe One of the Rooms Has Grandma’s Table in It
A Reflection on John 14:1–12, Memory, and the Homesickness of Heaven There are certain tables that never really leave us. Even after the house is sold, after the chairs sit empty.Even after the people who gathered around them have gone home to God. Some tables become part of us. Lately, as I have previously written…
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The Language That Never Left Him: Words We Learn Before We Know We Are Learning
There are some stories that arrive all at once. And there are others that wait quietly for decades before finally revealing themselves. Lately I have been thinking about language. Not simply vocabulary or grammar or pronunciation. But language as memory.Language as belonging.Language as identity.Language as the invisible architecture through which we first learn how to…
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The Safest Place I Knew-Even At The Edge of Death
There are moments in life that cannot be explained neatly. They can only be remembered with reverence. For me, one of those moments happened in November of 2020, during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was on a ventilator, in a coma, fighting COVID and bilateral pneumonia. I was not aware of…
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Grandma’s Kitchen Table: The Safest Place I’ve Ever Known
There are rooms we pass through—and then there are rooms that hold us. Grandma’s kitchen was the latter. It wasn’t large. It wasn’t styled for magazines. The linoleum bore the soft scuffs of years. And at the center stood the table, solid, worn, and quietly beautiful, built by Grandpa’s hands. You could see it in…
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