Aaron Troyer

Five funerals in eighteen months. Two babies, a toddler, a teenager, and a 60-year-old father of nine. The sadness, the hugs, the commiseration, and recognition of a common mortal lot feels starkly familiar. The endless loop of unfair suffering and separation is spinning up. We stand and sit in sad

All five boys are here. The last one snuck in around midnight. In the early morning, we shuffle and whisper in the dark, donning gear and gathering guns. Most of us have 300 Win. mags. I am the oldest at thirty-nine, the youngest is twenty-four. Dad says in a hoarse

There is a growing culture of suspicion in this postmodern age we have dropped into like aliens from space. Question everything with the presupposition that nothing is as it seems is the philosophy of the day. A primarily suspicious culture is rooted in the belief that we are fed lies

An adult makes about 35,000 decisions daily or about one every two waking seconds. Most are micro choices, while only occasionally macro decisions with major implications pop up. Throughout these micro choices, patterns of decision-making are operating. They have a cumulative effect, for better or worse. In Decision Making

What is the key to being a motivated person who is both positive and productive? An older fellow who drove log truck used to deliver a load of logs to our mill every day. He quietly and efficiently did his job and always had a congenial attitude. One day I

It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. —Mark Twain Belief can be defined widely on a sliding scale of commitment and intensity. For the sake of this discussion, bear with me and define belief

Christopher Knight was a young man in the mid-1980s. He had a home in Maine and a job as a locksmith. Life started to overwhelm him and every encounter with another person seemed to be a stressful, zero-sum situation. One day he climbed into his small SUV and just drove

I don’t like chickens. They could never survive on their own. They are brainless and gross, especially if you are forced to participate in the killing, cleaning, and dismembering. God did not make chickens; He made grouse and pheasants. Also, these little yapping creatures we call dogs? When God

A few weeks ago, my Grandma transitioned to the eternal state at age eighty-nine. Since her husband preceded her to the post physical four years ago, she was my last surviving grandparent. Losing her feels like the end of an era. My parents are now the old people, and that

A disturbing number of people fall for strange radicalisms that derail them from a normal productive life. Weird health fads that are actually money schemes preying on gullible individuals. Illogical conspiracies so complex that the possibility of them is off the charts. Religious dogmas that obscure the simple truth and