Pen-demic

  This stained-glass window was donated to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham  by the people of Wales after the church was bombed in 1963. (Solomon Crenshaw, For The Birmingham Times) Unexpected neighboring Meeting without assembling Worshipping without walls Zooming without traveling WestWinging without commercials Broken-hearting of America Peanut butter experimenting Richard Rohring Advent Understanding without knowing Waiting without promises.

  The Maskless Wonders Now that our chief executives and their spouses have demonstrated the hygienic value of wearing masks by spurning them, we can meditate about the symbolism of the “Maskless Wonders.” Both President Donald Trump and his wife, as well as Governor Mike Parsons (Missouri) and his wife have contracted the coronavirus within the past ten days. Whether they are severely stricken is not a political matter.  My prayer is that they are spared severe symptoms. What matters is how their contempt for wearing masks has affected our neglect of this precaution. We know that a public model matters, because the President’s example has spawned national resistance to wearing masks as a precaution against covid. In Missouri we have had vocal protests from citizens of hard-hit Jefferson County, declaring it was a personal freedom to shun masks and brandishing signs stating that Hitler would have dictated such requirements. Apparently it is a kind of free expression to go mask...

13-year-old Braydon Harrington, from New Hampshire, spoke of connecting with Joe Biden over stuttering.   DNC One certain star of the Democratic Nominating Convention was 13-year-old Brayden Harrington, who bravely stuttered his way through a campaign endorsement  of Joe Biden. Harrington had met Biden back in February at a CNN Town Hall in Concord, NH, where Biden had told stories of his struggle with stuttering as a child. Biden's sister later observed, "The stutter at the time was horrible for him. But I think it was a great gift, because he did not let the stuttering define him." This is the message that Biden shared with Brayden Harrington in Concord. More than a pep talk, Biden's advice extended to examples of how he marked his speeches with pauses to prevent the stutter from interrupting him. He gave Brayden the text of a speech marked with his pauses to keep as a reference. "And in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about someth...

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever, Amen.   The Lord's Prayer. The final sentence of the Lord's Prayer acknowledges that power belongs to God more than it belongs to the one who prays to God. It is power that we have a problem relinquishing, and power that we consider our right as free people. It is power that complicates every human relationship, and power that makes us reckless to the point of death. If we think that power is a right, rather than "an endowment" (Declaration of Independence), we endanger more lives than our own. The Coronavirus has seized power from people around the globe. There is no need to claim it is a God-sent pandemic, but it certainly is a test of our ability to yield power by curtailing our social activity. In the United States and Brazil we are flunking this test, because we consider ourselves free and invulnerable people. We do not understand that power is provisional. We must be ready to yield it at...

JUNE 24, 2020  BY  WTUCKER Play Hard Ball! The end of hard ball bargaining over the Major League baseball season brought a sigh of relief among baseball fans. We now know the season will begin July 23 or 24 and encompass 60 regular-season games. But the strife of the negotiations over a month or more foreshadows future struggle between the billionaire owners and the millionaire players.  A prolonged negotiation suggests a lack of good faith in the negotiating parties. The issue is no longer the details of the contract, but who will gain the upper hand at the end of the negotiations. It is about power, not equity. According to U.S. Legal.com: Good faith bargaining requires employers and unions involved in collective bargaining to: use their best endeavours to agree to an effective bargaining process meet and consider and respond to proposals made by each other respect the role of the other’s representative by not seeking to bargain directly wit...

"Aimless Love" (Excerpt)    by Billy Collins This morning as I walked along the lakeshore I fell in love with a wren   . . . .  . . .  I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap, so patient, so soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone. "Aimless Love"  is the title poem of a Billy Collins anthology published in 2014. It reminds me of why he is the favorite of so many readers.  He turns ordinary moments into celebrations, the mundane into the magical. How much we need now that magic as we careen around the same four walls for weeks on end!  How much we need the magic of the soap "so patient, so soluble."  Will we ever view soap "affectionately" again?  What about disinfecting wipes and protective masks? Can we celebrate them now?  Will we remembe...

Archie Bunker  :  The Lord God created me in his image. Michael 'Meathead' Stivic  :  You mean God looks like you? Archie Bunker  :  I ain't sayin' you couldn't tell the two of us apart. Archie Bunker  :  Every picture I've seen of God, he's white. Henry Jefferson  :  Well, maybe you were looking at the negative! [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0509934/characters/nm0005279] Politicians need to have more respect for their Bibles.  They are more than  tools of the trade. The theological discourse of Ohio State Representative Nino Vitale (below) brings to mind Archie Bunker's theology, quoted above.  The belief that humankind was created in the image of God was invoked by the legislator to defend his not wearing a mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. He posted on Facebook: This is not the entire world. This is the greatest nation on earth founded on Judeo-Christian Principles. One of those principles...

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 The secular view of Easter Sunday is  families dressing up and looking good in church. The spiritual view is God’s  vindication and resurrection of a guiltless man who suffered at the hands of angry mobs, politicians, and even his own friends. Before Easter we remember our complicity in the Crucifixion, and following this realization, our redemption and freedom in the Resurrection. If we consider Easter Sunday merely a target day for reducing social distancing, the significance of Jesus’ persecution and sacrifice is lost.  If we think of Lent as the countdown to re-employment, we have turned God’s most dramatic intervention in human history into a celebration for the Stock Market on Easter Monday. We have already lost the “Christmas season” to commercial interests, because the sales leading up to Christmas have become the most important theme of Advent. Waiting for the coming of Christ does not get much play in the media. Easter shoul...