I wrote this back in 2010 – and thought today was a good day to repost it. In 2003 my brothers, father and I began a series of tromps around western Europe. The excuse was that my brothers were both living in Europe at the time. My middle brother was planting a church in Poitiers in France and my little brother’s MASH unit was attached to the 3rd Infantry Division stationed at the time in […]
Julian Long, who always gives us a gift when he blogs, reflecting on his father’s military service and the present pandemic, writes (in a lovely longer essay): out the backroom window | commonplaces, travel, advocacy, occasional photos, at home in St. Louis . . .: [T]his memorial day I am thinking again about my father and about this very fine polemic by Marilynne Robinson in the June 11 issue of The New York Review of […]
Quick post to point people to this article in The Atlantic. Derek Thompson collects the best and most recent information about how the coronavirus is spread. He points to what South Korea learned studying a particular spreading event in an office building: Coronavirus: How Will We Ever Be Safe Inside? – The Atlantic: In its conclusion, the Korean CDC writes that the spread of the virus was almost entirely limited to the one floor “despite […]
TEOTWAWKI. “The End of the World as we know it” is an old meme. You can read countless sci-fi novels (I have!) that use a moment of cataclysmic change to frame the narrative arc of the hero’s journey (a la Joseph Campbell). Watch Star Wars, watch the Avenger’s Movie series, etc and you’ll see what I mean. So does this present season of pandemic presage a turning of the age in human history? Maybe? Likely […]
The First Letter of St. Peter was written to the newly baptized in a dispersed community across Asia Minor. It imagines a new family emerging, a family of marginalized people and powerful people gathered together. It teaches us what it looks like to overcome evil by doing good.
How Will the Coronavirus Change Us? – The Atlantic: When AIDS came into the world, disease researchers reconsidered, loudly warning of new pandemics. Journalists wrote books with titles such as The Coming Plague and Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. But not many nonscientists took these warnings to heart. The American public has not enjoyed its surprise reentry into the world of contagion and quarantine—and this unhappiness seems likely to have consequences. Scholars […]
God of pilgrims and all who journey, walk beside us as we begin down the path of restoration and recovery in our communities. Help us as we transition to a new way of being your people. Let us encounter you in friend and stranger. Help us to care for our neighbor and the outcast. May all be safe and may our new life right the wrongs of the old. This we ask in the name […]
Bishop W. Nicholas Knisely of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island put it right on the table at the outset of our conversation. “This strikes me as one of those epochal moments in our history,” he began. 205 more words Coronacast 10: Bishop Knisely — Jessica David
