Category Archives: On Life’s Purpose

I’m not John-Boy – My Journey to be a Writer

John-Boy journaling

My mother, June, said I reminded her of John-Boy (played by Richard Thomas) on the TV series The Waltons. She said it was because of that earnest look I had on my face that the world should know about the issues affecting people’s lives.

This is a picture of my Mom with my grandmother, Mary. They both loved teddy bears. Mr. Teddy was a gift from my Mom to my grandmother. I miss them both. They are in Heaven.

My nanna, (which is a British term for grandmother), and my Mom believed God had given me a beautiful mind. Nanna and my mother thought as a child, I was quite the storyteller.

I wasn’t an athlete, but I had a strong mind.

Mom encouraged me in the areas in which I was strong. She worked with my teachers to develop a reading program for me to learn about the lives of others with challenges such as Louis Braille and Helen Keller. She said they had sight that went beyond their blindness. They could feel things with their minds.

Helen Keller wrote, “Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.” That’s what my Mom did for me. She kept me focused on the sun — the things I could do well, and helped me improve upon tasks that were challenging for me. My Mom spent many hours over a period of months teaching me as a five-year-old how to tie my shoelaces. She was always patient. She said, “It’s okay. You’ll get it, Kevin. We’ll work at it together until you do.” When my father, Jim, got angry with me that I wasn’t understanding it, my Mom got me two pairs of shoes without shoelaces – running shoes and dress shoes.

Some context to why I have issues with coordination

What we didn’t know is that as a result of my mother being in labor over 36 hours there was brain damage. A top neurologist fourteen years ago said based on my clinical case history I was born with cerebral palsy. Coupled with this was a rare neurological condition affecting my ability to coordinate movement with my hands and arms. That was diagnosed 22 years ago by a gerontologist. That’s right. At age 38 I was seeing a specialist who has elderly people for patients. He was excited by my case! He said he hadn’t seen anyone so young with conditions like mine.

The unanswered question of what is my unknown disease is answered

In 2014 I was diagnosed with a rare auto immune condition called mastocytosis. When my doctor told me this I replied, “What’s that?” I thought, “I don’t like the sound of that.” I was thankful this unknown disease of decades finally had a name. Our doctor said, “Kevin, your immune system has too many mast cells. It’s a mast cell aggregation disease.” That means…” I’m thinking, “Okay, I don’t like the sound of this. Whatever the heck this condition is I have all these cells I never wanted in the first place. Who said you had permission to come into my body? This is an an unauthorized invasion by these villainous mast cells.”

Our doctor paused. He could see that I was bracing for the worst. In the medical odyssey of my life I had become conditioned to expect that.

“Kevin, there are treatments that will slow down the increase of these mast cells. These are cells that form part of your immune system. They are in your tissues and organs. Most people have the right number of them. You have way too many.

This is why you are getting so many allergic reactions that become anaphylactic. When there is a mast cell attack these deformed cells that are irregular in shape and size increase in number. Histamine is dumped all throughout your body along with toxic contents from the deformed cells.

I need to start you on more antihistamines right away.”

I asked, “What is systemic mastocytosis?”

He replied, “Kevin, this kind of mastocytosis occurs when the mast cells are affecting your body systems because they have spread into the cells in them.”

I am happy to say on treatment with antihistamines, mast cell regulators and immune system boosters many of the symptoms of the condition have reduced.

I had to also improve my diet. I avoid foods that are either histamine producing or releasing. I even had to start liking peas because they are good for my health. Karen can tell you what I thought of peas. I said to her after she cooked a large serving of them, “Darling, they’re not that bad with butter.” She smiled. Karen replied, “Sweety, you also think brussels sprouts aren’t too awful if they have cheese on them. ”

Well, I did eat the peas and brussels sprouts.

My mother saw beyond my physical challenges.

She didn’t see me as a kid with a spastic gait. When I came fourth in the 100-yard dash as a child and received a 4th place ribbon, she told me she was proud of me. There were only five of us in the race.

Mom taught me that winning isn’t the goal ; it is in doing your best.

I hear the voice of my grandfather when I was five. “Whatever you do, do with your might, for things done by halves are never done right.” He was paraphrasing a few lines in the poem by M.A. Stodart. “1

I wore glasses from the time I was a child. John-Boy used his for reading and writing. Those of us old enough to remember The Waltons know it was focused on John Walton Jr’s life experiences growing up with a large family in the area of the fictional Walton’s Mountain in fictional Jefferson County, Virginia. It is based on the best-selling novels Spencer’s Mountain and The Homecoming written by Earl Hamner Jr. He was an American television writer and producer. He was the narrator on The Waltons. Hearing Mr. Hamner describe the things John-Boy saw and experienced inspired me to become a writer. The books I made reference to were based on the author’s life experiences growing up with his mother and father and eight children (including himself) in Schulyer, Virginia, during the Depression.

Radio was an escape from how tough it was to find a job to feed your family. Millions of Americans were unemployed. You could listen to dramas like Ellery Queen, Charlie Chan, Dragnet and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. If comedy was what you preferred you could hear about the humorous day in the life of Fibber McGee and Molly or laugh at at Gracie’s odd way of thinking about life with her husband, George Burns, in Burns and Allen.

Here is a link for the cast members of The Waltons as they appeared in their roles and what they looked like many years later.

‘The Waltons’ Cast Then And Now 2023

The episodes covered the time period of the Great Depression to the Second World War, and into the late 1940s.

Watching The Waltons brings back memories of the aroma of my Mom’s apple pies with cinnamon that she would put on our kitchen window sill. The pies would call to me wherever I was. I could be running through the sprinkler with my brother and two sisters or sitting on our front steps on a hot and humid summer day to cool off. I ran up the steps and into our home to sample a slice or two, okay often three slices.

I took my job as food taster seriously. My Mom appointed me to the position. My specialty was desserts.

When I think about those delicious apple pies, I am home again.

In the episode The Theshold John Walton Jr. has finished his military service as a war correspondent for Stars and Stripes. He is broke. He needs a job to continue working on his novel. He meets with Dean Raymond Beck at the fictional Boatwright University hoping to get work teaching in the English department, but there are no openings. The Dean tells him that students down the hall in the drama department are experimenting using the new medium of television. They are doing a play and filming it.

John-Boy has to do something to break through the Dean’s insistence that the Board of Trustees will not fund another course.

Desperation can fuel one’s creativity.

John-Boy reaches into his creative mind that can brainstorm for any idea that will stick.

He sees a TV in the Dean’s office. A thought comes into his mind. He will try to convince Dean Beck and the Trustees that television is the future. He makes a deal with the Dean that if he can get the college Trustees to agree to funding a television department, the Dean will find him a job teaching in it.

The Dean impresses on John-Boy the importance of putting a creative speech together.

He submits a dramatic script to Dean Beck. He tells John-Boy that he needs to produce an address that is more dramatic and academic, which shows the educational value of television.

He presents a script to his siblings using the nine muses of Greek mythology to represent different ways in which television can be used. They laugh at it, which frustrates John-Boy. They tell him he needs to do something more exciting that has either romance or a science-fiction theme. John-Boy is upset with his brothers and sisters and his brother Ben’s wife, Cindy, for their lack of help. He starts work on another script. He in panicking that without anything to present to Dean Beck and the college Board of Trustees, his presentation will bomb.

John-Boy has one hour left before speaking to the Dean and Board of Trustees. His nephew, John Curtis, asks him to read a story from a picture book he has with him. John Curtis looks at him with that cute how could you say no to me expression. John-Boy uses reading that story for the concept he presents to Dean Beck and the Trustees that like that picture book, the future of television with its moving images presents an opportunity for programs such as opera. theatre and ballet.

Television can be used for the good of society.

Here is the speech John-Boy gave to the Trustees at Boatwright University.

“Dean Beck and the members of the board of trustees of Boatwright University…I labored for many hours trying to prepare this speech, and I didn’t get it right until I had a meeting with my nephew John Curtis, just before I came here.

He wanted to show me his new picture book, and as we turned the pages together, I suddenly had a glimpse into the future, where the pictures were alive and moving, and where boys and girls growing up in out-of-the-way places, like the hills of Virginia, could share in things they might not otherwise see.

Things like opera and ballet and concerts and theater.

Television will take them across the world into other lives, so that for John Curtis and his generation, there will be no strangers, just people who accept and understand each other.

Given that potential, we owe it to the future to search out the good, so that television becomes a celebration of life.” 2

“To search out the good” — John Walton Jr’s shiny optimism and that of those who developed TV is in sharp contrast to media today that seeks out stories that show the worst in us.

“The good is the beautiful.” -Plato

John Walton Jr. had seen more than enough of the ugliness in the world through his war service. He saw death every day. He witnessed the damage of Hitler’s air force with silent bombs. You didn’t hear them coming until it was too late. He saw comrades in arms be injured, disabled, and many die. His weapon was his typewriter. This is how John Walton Jr. fought in war. This is how he encouraged officers and soldiers. His words were his paintbrush; his canvas was the stories he wrote. John Walton Jr. could have lost his hope that a better world was possible. His faith sustained him. He knew from remembering the beauty of Walton’s Mountain, seeing the loveliness in the trees, hearing the chirping of a bird outside his bedroom window as he wrote in his journal, that he needed to take time to breathe these things into his spirit.

The visionary

John-Boy was a visionary. He saw the potential for television to educate, entertain and improve society. While it has done all these things much of what I see on TV is dark. It depresses me. I have to look away from it because too many stories are full of violence. While I understand this is much of our current reality, I still believe we can rise to our better selves, and show more of what is best about television. Its programs can make us laugh, cry, feel for the plight of others, inspire us to speak out against injustice, and mature as human beings. We have a medium that can benefit our communities and world if we use it wisely. Just a few thoughts about that from the older Mr. Earnest.

A later TV movie called A Waltons Thanksgiving was about John Walton Jr. being sent to Washington D.C. to cover the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Millions of people that tragic day will forever have imprinted upon their minds the scene where they witnessed his assassination. In a rare departure from not showing an emotional reaction to news stories Walter Cronkite cried.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” – Bishop Desmond Tutu

Through Mr. Cronkite’s tears, the breaking up of his voice, his facial gestures, the pausing as he composes his thoughts — he reaches into his humanness to the grief of America and the world.

That day America’s re-awakening innocence after the Second World War took a major hit. The 1000 days of Camelot that was the way journalists described John F. Kennedy’s presidency ended.

Five years later hope for the kind of world Kennedy envisioned was ignited again through his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. He was running for President. He was going to bring home the troops from Vietnam. He had traveled across America and visited its slums. He had seen first-hand what poverty does to the souls of people. It wears down their belief life will ever get any better That was the heart of the man. He was far from perfect as we all are, but he sought to reach into his humanity to empathize with the suffering of, and try to understand the dreams of others.

Two months before he died he gave one of the most heart-felt addresses recorded. He was in Indianapolis, Indiana, speaking to a largely black community. He was cheered because the people gathered there thought he was going to speak about what he would do if elected President. He started by saying he had some bad news. Martin Luther King had been shot and killed. There were gasps followed by silence.

Robert Kennedy spoke of the feelings of retribution he had for his brother, President John F. Kennedy, being killed by a white man. Then, he said that only by joining together could the nation heal.

This is part of the speech he gave.

“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote, “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”3

A young man’s life with brilliant ideas to steer America in the direction of uniting black and white, to heal a divided nation, was cut short.

This excerpt from the eulogy of Teddy Kennedy speaks about his brother Robert’s humanity.

“…My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.4

Photo of Mr. Earnest (me) when I was 21. He asked me to hold the picture frame for him.

Forgiveness is something we initially do for ourselves and sometimes others.

Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves and sometimes others. It doesn’t mean that should we choose to forgive those who have hurt us that the perpetrators escape God’s justice. The Bible is clear on this point. “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. (Romans 12:9, NASB).

I agree that if the abuser is truly repentant and stops abusing people that person can be forgiven. Their lives can be redeemed to help others. Abusers who turn around their lives as part of any sentence should have to do volunteer work seeing for themselves the tremendous damage abuse does to the lives of the abused.

It can take many years of therapy for an abused person to move at some level beyond their abuse. It is a robbery of what that person’s life might have been if he or she hadn’t been assaulted physically, emotionally or sexually. Still, those who have been abused can heal enough to be the wounded healers of others. Negative programming embedded in the abused by their abusers that they are much less than they are is addressed only as we listen to them.

Give the abused positive affirmations such as these: You are a beautiful person inside and out. You are funny. You are smart. You are creative. You are talented.

Let us work together to listen and do our best with God’s help to be used by Him to transform the lives of the abused and abusers. We need to do this to break the vicious cycle abuse passed down from one generation to the next. Sadly, there are those who are abused who become abusive. It is a pattern of learned behavior from one or both parents to their children. Some of these children grow up and become abusive. Their children observe this is the way their parent (s) handle stress and conflict. We need to teach the abused and abusers there are healthier ways to do this.

What follows is an overview of the growing crisis of domestic abuse using these statistics:

Domestic Violence:

On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.¹
1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.2
1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. This includes a range of behaviors (e.g. slapping, shoving, pushing) and in some cases might not be considered “domestic violence.”1
1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g. beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime.1
1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.1
On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide.9
The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%. 10
Women between the ages of 18-24 are most commonly abused by an intimate partner.2
Domestic victimization is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behavior.2
Only 34% of people who are injured by intimate partners receive medical care for their injuries.2

Stalking:

19.3 million women and 5.1 million men in the United States have been stalked in their lifetime.1 60.8% of female stalking victims and 43.5% men reported being stalked by a current or former intimate partner.11

Children and Domestic Violence:

1 in 15 children are exposed to intimate partner violence each year, and 90% of these children are eyewitnesses to this violence.5

Rape:

1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in the United States has been raped in their lifetime.1
Almost half of female (46.7%) and male (44.9%) victims of rape in the United States were raped by an acquaintance. Of these, 45.4% of female rape victims and 29% of male rape victims were raped by an intimate partner.11
1 in 15 children are exposed to intimate partner violence each year, and 90% of these children are eyewitnesses to this violence.5

Homicide:

A study of intimate partner homicides found that 20% of victims were not the intimate partners themselves, but family members, friends, neighbors, persons who intervened, law enforcement responders, or bystanders.3
72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female.8 5

Statistics are easy to read. We need to keep in our minds, though, that these are not merely numbers. These are real people who have had their lives torn apart by the destructive force of abuse in all its forms. We do a serious injustice to these people if we don’t continue to take action individually and collectively as a society to deal with it.

If you see abuse call 911 or your local police immediately.6 You could save a life. You could minimize the risk the abused person will be seriously harmed.

Christians should never coerce the abused into forgiving their abusers.

Well-meaning Christians who may have had bad teaching think it is their responsibility to challenge people who have been abused to forgive their abusers. Sensitivity must be used in approaching people about this. We need to remember that there will be people who we are coaching, counseling and listening to, who aren’t Christians. They will bristle and turn away from you if you say they must forgive those who abused them physically, emotionally or sexually. Someone who has been hit, ridiculed or raped, won’t hear you when you use a confrontational approach.

There are people who have been so deeply injured, they may not forgive those who did that to them while they are alive. This should never be met with judgment. They need to be listened to. They need to be loved as Christ loves and has compassion for them.

I was moved by a woman who expressed in an online group that she didn’t want any Christians attacking her for not forgiving her abuser. This is not the way Jesus would have dealt with her; neither should we as Christians. Jesus would have listened. He would have heard her anger. He would have cried for the violation she experienced. Christ would have reached out to her with understanding.

Let the person who has been abused forgive in God’s time.

When I counsel a person who has been abused, I don’t shut down the individual emotionally. I encourage the individual to speak. I don’t criticize. I don’t interrupt the person and challenge what is being said because I don’t agree with it. In initial counseling sessions you work on establishing trust. The time to offer the client thoughts and questions for self-reflection comes after the person you are helping thinks you can be trusted. Please keep in mind your client who may have loved their abuser has had their feeling of safety around their abuser broken.

I share with you more about my experience in forgiving my father, Jim, for abusing me.

In my thirties I began to see with a little wiser eyes forgiving my father, Jim, was what I needed to do for me. I also needed to forgive myself that as a despairing five-year-old boy, I couldn’t stop the abuse. Too many children grow up carrying guilt that was never their responsibility to carry. I said to my inner child as a man, “You can let go of your shame that you failed to stop your father, Jim, from abusing your Mom, June. You didn’t do anything wrong.” This started that long path of getting rid of all that corroding toxin in my soul through writing.

My plan to study journalism was delayed until my early thirties. I did that as part of my Bachelor of Theology degree at Canada Christian College and Graduate School in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I graduated from there in 1997.

My writing encouraged other people to come forward about their abuse.

The beautiful thing is that as I have written these stories, others are coming forward with the torment they have kept locked away. That makes it more than worth going to the awful places to accomplish this.

Developing as a writer

I grew more as a writer as I dealt with subjects other than abuse. I was blessed to have mentoring from Will Rooen. He was my journalism professor. He instilled confidence in me that I had the talent to become a very good journalist. Will is on permanent assignment in Heaven. The lessons he taught me and his students about being a truth speaker live on in me.

I had the privilege of being selected out of Will’s class for a journalism internship. He taught me that the best writing is succinct. I have read articles and books that take far too long to grab my attention. I don’t read any further unless I think he author is exceptional.

Will said in one of his classes, “When writing a story don’t use 50 and 75 cent words. Simple words reach readers most.”

One of the first articles I wrote in Will’s class was given back to me with two-thirds of it crossed out. I said to Will, “I thought it was a good story.” He replied, “Kevin, yes it is, but you need to lose the flowery language. There are too many unnecessary details. The one-third of it I left in is the heart of your story.”

Although the initial article had too much creative writing I learned from my former English teachers, they did help me refine my writing, and find my voice.

Everyone has their unique way of communicating.. Sometimes, I read my earlier pieces to see how far I’ve come as a writer. Try it if you haven’t already. It will encourage you.

Accepting criticism of my writing
I had grown in my ability to accept constructive criticism. Will can thank Mrs. Lowry, who was my Grade 10 English teacher for that. I got a D on my first essay. I spoke with her after class about it. I said, “All my other English teachers gave me an A on most of my assignments. The lowest I got from them was a B. I never got a D.” She paused and smiled. She said, “Kevin, do you want to be a mediocre writer or a very good one?” She caught me off guard with that question.

I said, “Uh, um, well, I’d rather be a good writer.” Mrs. Lowry said, “Then, Kevin, you need to learn to accept constructive criticism. You worry too much.” She got that right! I responded, “But you’ve written things like “BW”(bad wording), run-on sentences and repetitive sentence structure all over my essay. None of my other teachers did that. They told me I was a good student.”

Mrs. Lowry grunted. I imagined steam coming from her nostrils like a bull ready to charge. There was this uncomfortable silence. She changed the subject. Did I say she was smart? Mrs. Lowry said, “Kevin, you are submitting writing that you aren’t putting much effort into. You are a much better writer than that.” I thought, “Gee, how did she know that?” Did I say she was a perceptive teacher?

When I saw in Grade 11, I was getting higher marks for my essays, I made it a point after one of Mrs. Lowry’s classes to go and thank her. I said, “Mrs. Lowry, I wasn’t thankful for the C plus you gave me for your course, but because of you I’m getting much higher marks on my essays.” She gave me an ear-to-ear grin. She said, “But, Kevin, that C plus I gave you is like getting a 90. You got the second highest grade in two classes.”

I thought I hadn’t done that well.

Thank you, Mrs. Lowry, for being a tough marker. I continued my growth as a writer because you cared enough about me to not accept less than my best.

Writing is a process
Writing takes many lonely hours, hard work, and snacks to give you energy to do it. Your writing will improve with practice. I’m not endorsing eating too much junk food. I have a balanced diet. I have fruit with cookies.

You need private space to be alone with your thoughts; these become stories. Don’t rush them. When you aren’t working to a deadline give a few days or more for your ideas to develop. I have an unfinished story I’ve been working on. I set it aside. I know it’s not ready. I need more time to edit it. Don’t concern yourself with writing in progress. The best writing happens when you set it aside, work on other stories, or unwind by doing something you enjoy.

Give yourself a mental break, especially with those difficult stories that take you to hard places. Be kind to yourself. If you force stories too much you could go into burnout. That happened to me when I first started my blog Dreaming Together for a Better World ten years ago. I tried to write too many stories at once. Your writing suffers when you do that. You get worn out. It can take a long time to get back to your writing or you give it up altogether. What a waste that would be of writing that could help your readers feel that it’s okay not to feel okay — to be real about what they’re feeling. That’s when people begin their inner healing.

Write whatever comes to your mind. Edit it later. Stories lose their impact if you take out all of the life in them. It’s like having one of those cheap pies that doesn’t have much fruit in it. We’ve all had those. Yuck.

Learning to understand myself

I studied Psychology and Counseling to understand myself more. I learned how counseling others with trauma or whatever issue they were dealing with, passes along a gift of healing the wounds of others. When people see their true beauty their light shines brighter. They are freed of the emotional baggage that has been weighing them down like an anchor. They begin to know and like who they are.

But I’m not John-Boy

But I don’t look anything like John-Boy. But I do wear glasses.

References:

Dr. Kevin Osborne is the Dean of Psychology and President of Student Affairs for St. James the Elder University. He is s therapist, writer, poet, and singer. He helps people in their inner healing journey. Dr. Kevin Osborne lives in Timmins, northern Ontario, Canada, with his wife, Karen. She is the Registrar for SJTEU. Karen has a B.A. in Clinical Christian Counseling summa cum laude from St. James the Elder Theological Seminary (now St. James the Elder University). She is planning to pursue graduate studies majoring in Psychology and Applied Theology. Karen is a writer and editor, and counselor. Karen and Kevin are powned by their 20-year-old cat, Katherine, a.k.a. Her Royal Furriness, Princess Katherine of Timmins.

Posted in On Life's Purpose