I recently traveled to beautiful Bucks County, Pennsylvania for a much-needed respite. The houses there are deliberately spaced apart leaving room for large fields. Verdant in summer, they lay fallow during my November visit, inhabited only by large flocks of Canadian geese. Bucks County is the setting to the 1940 play, “George Washington Slept Here,” by George Kaufman and Moss Hart.  The playwrights had both purchased fixer upper homes in Bucks County and created a main character to have similar struggles. Newton Fuller moves into a deteriorating Colonial home with good intentions, and he believes that his wife will be impressed by the home’s history. You guessed it; George Washington…

In 1892, a baby boy was born in South Africa. His parents named him John. When John was three years old, his mother and baby brother returned to their native England. John’s father was expected to join them a little later, but he died before he could be reunited with his family.  His father’s death would change the course of John’s life, as death always does. Death is God’s invisible rudder that steers decisions into destinations. John’s mother would raise her sons with their grandparents and their aunt. John’s childhood was filled with exploring local hills, valleys and his aunt’s farm, Bag End. At twelve, the invisible rudder of death…