Real News, Real People

There is real news today
The Supreme Court of the land hearing arguments
About whether all who love, may legally marry

And a real couple watch: can they make plans?
Set a date?

There is real news today
Baltimore is burning
With rage, with despair, with anguish
And 2 real persons watch from their respective windows
Is it safe to go to work today?
Will his blue security uniform mean attack?
Will his black skin mean death?

There is real news today
Nepali people dig in the rubble for loved ones
Landslides, avalanche, no way to get supplies
And 2 real family members, a world away, listen
Hoping for a phone call that mama is okay
The ping of an email that the student has been located.

Turn off the analysis
The posturing
The replaying over and over
To elicit the emotional reaction
That means you'll keep watching
And paying for them to do it all again
Tomorrow

There is real news today
With real people.

Comments

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to

Too Many Reasons to Kill

Along with discussing racism and common sense gun regulation, perhaps we should consider Cain Killing Abel, Daniele Crespi, Wikimedia something more basic - why, in the United States, do we have so many legal reasons to kill another person? My dad and I were talking about this whole Zimmerman thing, and some other cases that have come up. He recalled a conversation with a colleague from Germany. His colleague was an engineering contractor, here in Houston for a few weeks. They were at Guido's, enjoying seafood and beer, and his colleague was astounded at the long list of killings in the newspaper. He said that Houston alone had more killings than all of Germany. Yes, they have regulations about weapons in his country, he said, but more than that, "we do not have all those legal reasons for a person to kill another." Around the U.S., it's hard to make the case that we value human life, we have so many reasons to kill. If you feel threatened , if you're p

We've Reached the "Tom Hanks Eating Raw Fish" Phase of the Pandemic

Last May, as it became apparent the covid-19 pandemic was not going to be a temporary affair, I wrote about the benefits of imagining you were shipwrecked on a deserted island. Now, a year after we began hearing about the "novel coronovirus," I suspect that many of us have now entered the "Tom Hanks Eating Raw Fish" stage of the pandemic. We've made the best of things. Rearranged home offices and homeschool desks. Got through the holidays, mustering as much joy as we could. There's a permanent hook or basket at the front door for our masks. Most of us by now either know someone who died of covid, or are, at most, 2 degrees away. Our co-worker's husband's mother. Our friend's aunt. Or closer. We've grieved. And now...we're just numb. We keep putting one foot in front of the other, because that's what we have to do. We eat, we drink, we sleep. We get our work done. We nag our kids to do school work. But our affect is flat. Like Ha

Boots and Blessings

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