Bob David (BD): Bill, at age 84, you are about to retire as chaplain at Boston Medical Center. You’ve been there for 18½ years, which means you were around 65 when you came onboard. Can you give a rundown of your rich history and experience before then, which I understand was not without controversy? ...more

One Christmas day the whole family came together, as was the custom: my father, stepmother, younger and older sisters, older brother, possibly two grandmothers, maybe an aunt and uncle, and, I recall, various step-relations.

I was 15 or 16 years old. We exchanged gifts and consumed a great big midday meal, desserts and everything. The pressure of the festivities had me ready to explode. So my brother and I decided to leave the family gathering, as was our custom, for some adventure of our own. ...more

The return of Johnny the buck last fall gave me four pregnant does this spring. The expectant mamas: Baraka, Mocha Swirl (Baraka’s kid of last season), Yasmina, and Joey. They were all due around the second week of April; I was headed to Haiti for a six-day film shoot,* planning to return in time for their births. ...more

I had this dream that I was dreaming. This dream-within-a-dream goes like this: ...more

As far as I know, aside from stamping out ice cream cones in a factory when he was a teenager, my father’s entire working career revolved around the selling of alcoholic beverages. He began as a high school student helping out in the tavern purchased by his father, who had accumulated a fortune building houses before losing it in the Crash of 1929 and trying another avenue to get back on his feet. ...more

The convicts and I, a volunteer, sit in a circle in the prison. We do this every Thanksgiving. Eyes closed, we imagine sitting around a table in a clearing surrounded by a woods in which the parts of ourselves we have exiled live a furtive life.

We sense inside for any exile who might feel safe enough with us now to step out of the woods and join us at the feast. ...more

We who are in recovery are all good people. None of us prayed to be sick, none of us asked God for addiction.

The first gift I received was intervention. For some time, I had been drinking before going to work—fighting the nausea and gag reflex at the smell and taste—and drinking at work as well. My boss called me into the office; there sat the Rector of the parish, my Bishop, and our senior elected Lay Officer. My Bishop said, “I want you to go, do not worry about the cost, I want to see you well.” ...more

Xiao Bien and Da Bien
Pet ownership comes with responsibility. There is one obligation that my wife, daughter, and relatives all shun. They run the other way. That duty is to pick up and clean up after Toby meets his sanitary requirements: pees and poops, performs #1 and #2, does xiao bien and da bien (Chinese)—i.e., does his business. ...more

With the shift changing, the nurse was identifying us to her relief: "She is the social worker…the mother…the doctor from the Jimmy Fund…” Turning towards me, she said, “I'm sorry, I don't know who you are. Are you the father?"

"No, I'm just a friend."

“Just a friend”—what pitiful words. The girl lay dying in the intensive care unit of Children’s Hospital, surrounded by an awesome display of life-saving equipment. ...more

Some of the most difficult yet profound experiences of my 65 years transpired during the course of five journeys I made to Africa. Four of them took me to Burkina Faso, where I spent many weeks among the Dagara people in the remote tribal village of Dano, near the border with Ghana. Because of its remoteness, the essential elements of the indigenous world had survived in this area despite some 500 years of European colonization. I went there with a teacher, Malidoma Somé, to immerse myself in the rudiments of that world. ...more