Let us enter into a spirit of care, remembrance, and prayer for the world, for our country, for those who have impact on our lives, and for the unfolding of care, innovation and discovery of life. Let us honor those people and events that have come before us as we look toward the possibilities of what may come and what we can create.

Prayers for the World

We pray for peace for the Middle East, for an end to the violence, for the reduction of oil prices worldwide, and for countries to work together to the mutual benefit of all people.

We pray for those who died in Lebanon after bombings today. At least 19 people died.

We pray for the people of Ukraine and an end to war there.

We pray with gratitude for the 59 countries who’ve agreed to create a “roadmap” away from fossil fuel use at the “Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels” Conference this last week. Half of these countries produce fossil fuels.

We pray for newly sworn in Prime Minister Peter Magyar of Hungary. May all Hungarians benefit from its newly elected leadership. Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions and governmental checks and balances that were heavily eroded during Orbán’s rule, and to clamp down on alleged corruption.

We pray for those in Northeastern Philippines who are fleeing volcanic ash from Mayon volcano. Over 5000 people have fled the area. Vegetable crops have been damaged and livestock has died. The area is populated by some 200,000 people.

We pray for Mexico City which is currently sinking at the pace of 10 inches a year due to groundwater pumping and urban development. Even satellite photos have shown the sinkage.

We pray with gratitude for the Grand River First Nation and Neoen (an international renewable energy company) that have teamed up together for Ontario, Canda’s largest solar farm project. Construction will begin in 2028 and will begin operation in 2030. Neoen is also teaming with Matachewan First Nation on another solar project.

We pray with gratitude for new renters’ rights enacted in the UK. Renters’ rights have been broadened to reduce discrimination, unfair rent increases, faster redress against poor conditions, and banning fixed-term contracts and “no fault” evictions.

We pray for the Capital Kiwi Project which is working to restore the kiwi population to New Zealand. Once 12 million kiwi birds roamed New Zealand. Today there are 70,000 kiwis left. The Project recently rewilded seven crates of kiwis around the countries capital and is working toward the bird being commonplace for the next generation of New Zealanders.

We pray for Alberta, where separation activists contend they have enough signatures to force a vote on secession from Canada. Signatures have yet to be verified and First Nations people have filed suit saying the referendum violates their agreements with the province and the country.

We pray for those in Changsha, China, affected by the explosion at the fireworks factory last week. At least 26 people have died and others have been injured.

We pray for those on the cruise ship in the Atlantic where the Hantavirus has claimed three lives with at least 11 others stricken. We pray for the health for all those being tracked.

We pray for those affected in Leipzig, Germany, where a driver plowed into a crowd of people last week. Two people have died and another 20 people were injured.

We pray with gratitude for the ending of the global tariffs.

We pray for an end to the use of Russian paramilitary forces to support military juntas in Africa. Recent attacks in Mali were carried out by these forces, formerly known as the Wagner Group.

We pray for those affected by the volcanic eruption on Halmahera Island in Indonesia this week. At least three people have died and other were injured.

We pray for those in Japan engaging in anti-war protests, the largest the country has seen in decades, following the prime minister’s push to increase defense spending.

We pray for the Australians holding vigils following the alleged murder of a 5-year-old Aboriginal girl near Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

We pray for those affected by the fire the fairground in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico, during a concert there. At least five people have died.

We pray for those affected by explosion at a coal-mine near Bogata, Colombia this week. At least nine people have died and six others were injured.

We pray for those in Chad who died after the ambush by Boko Haram. Chad has declared a National Day of Mourning.

We continue to pray for the people of Cuba who are experiencing food shortages, power outages, and economic hardship.

Prayers for the United States

We pray for a government that solves people’s problems as opposed to creating distractions to change the conversation.

We pray for the Native American tribes in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska, who have sued the US government to stop exploratory drilling for graphite on tribal sacred spaces.

We pray that Congress does not approve government funding for a promised White House ballroom that was initially reported to be paid by private donations.

We pray for an end to assault weapons being available to the public. This week the Department of Justice sued the city of Denver to end its assault weapons ban.

We pray for the Southern Poverty Law Center as the had their first appearance in court in charges from the Department of Justice.

We pray for an end to gerrymandering and for representation that is fair for all people.

We pray for Smith College as the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the historic school for admitting transgender women.

We pray for the lawsuit in Pennsylvania charging that AI chat boxes are representing themselves as doctors.

We remember the website ask.com also known as “Ask Jeeves” which closed last week after 25 years.

We pray for a reversal of the FDA’s approval of fruit-flavored vapes.

We pray with gratitude for the new rules that will revoke passports to travelers who owe more than 100,000 dollars’ worth of child support.

We pray for those affected by norovirus on the Fort-Lauderdale based cruise ship in the Caribbean. At least 115 people have been affected.

Prayers For Those Who Have Impact on our Lives

We remember CNN/TNT/TBS founder, entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner who died this week at age 87.

We remember Irish actor Gary Lydon, “Banshees of Insherin” whose death was reported this week at age 61.

We remember New York Yankees broadcaster John Sterling who died this week at age 87.

We remember Donna Fisher, co-founder with her husband of The Gap, who died this week at age 94.

We remember Baseball Hall of Famer and manager, Bobby Cox, who died this week at age 84.

We honor environmentalist, educator, and television star Sir David Attenborough who turned 100 this week.

We pray for singer Bonnie Tyler, 74, who is in a medically induced coma, following emergency surgery in Portugal.

We congratulate Cherie DeVaux, the first female trainer to win a Kentucky Derby this last weekend. The horse Golden Tempo came from the back to win the 152^nd Kentucky Derby. Golden Tempo is also owned by a woman.

We congratulate those awarded a Pulitzer Prize for journalism and the arts last week. For full list of winners which include The New York Times, The Washington Post, Texas Monthly, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and The Associated Press, follow this link. We need more journalism that sheds the truth on the world. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2026?user_id=6766b385fcb8b9ccf60fbdc8

We congratulate all those receiving Tony nominations this week.

Prayers for Unfolding Care, Innovation and Discovery of Life

We pray for the 1,500 dogs rescued in Wisconsin from a research and breeding facility in Wisconsin. Activists had been protesting outside the facility over their concerns for the dogs. The beagles are currently up for adoption.

We pray with gratitude for the report released this week that Australia is on track to become the first country to eliminate cervical cancer (by 2035).

We pray with hope around the new study if Indigenous people in the Peruvian Andes’ Mountains that shows how culture, diet and environment interact to shape human genomes, with implications for understanding metabolism, the microbiome and gene–diet interactions relevant to human health. The Indigenous people there have what was called a superpower in how they dealt with a high-starch diet.

We Honor Our History on this Day, and Pray to Remember what These People and Events Have Informed Us

We honor with prayer the events and the lives of people born on this day in history May we celebrate the contributions, remember those who died, and learn from the harm that was the done:

· In 1497, Amerigo Vespucci was reported to have left for his first voyage to the New World

· In 1503, Christopher Columbus visited the Cayman Islands, naming them Las Tortugas after the numerous turtles there

· In 1534, Jacques Cartier visited Newfoundland

· In 1752, French scientist Thomas Francois Dalibard drew sparks from a 50-foot rod raised in a thunderstorm, proving lightning is a form of electricity

· In 1765, British clock master John Harrison was awarded 10,000 pounds for the invention of the naval longitude clock

· In 1768, riots break out in London over the imprisonment of John Wilkes, a journalist who severely criticized King George II

· In 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act designed to help the British East India Company

· In 1774, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became King and Queen of France

· In 1775, a small colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga

· In 1775, the Second Continental Congress took place in Philadelphia

· In 1776, Napoleon’s Army defeated the Austrian Army at Lodi Bridge in Italy killing some 2000 Austrian soldiers

· In 1797, the first US Navy ship was launched

· I=In 1801, The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declared war on the United State of America (The First Barbary War)

· In 1824, The National Gallery Opened in London

· In 1837, New York City banks suspend the payment of specie (a kind of coin), triggering a national banking crisis and an economic depression whose severity was not surpassed until the Great Depression of 1929

· In 1837, Pickney Pinchback, the first US black governor (Louisiana), was born

· In 1838, John Wilkes Booth was born (assassinated Abraham Lincoln)

· In 1855, yogi Yukteswar Giri, guru of Paramahansa Yogananda and Swami Satyananda Giri was born

· In 1865, Union troops captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis

· In 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, in Utah Territory with a golden spike

· In 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to be nominate for president of the United States

· In 1877, US president Rutherford B. Hayes had the first White House telephone installed

· In 1886, the English Football Association approved the sporting cap for international matches. The earliest caps were velvet with satin linings and a tassel

· In 1886, Swiss theologian Karl Barth was born

· In 1893, renowned Pueblo artist Tonita Pena was born

· In 1893, the US Supreme Court decided, for taxation reasons, that despite scientific evidence, a tomato was a vegetable and not a fruit

· In 1899, American actor/dancer/singer Fred Astaire was born

· In 1900 astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne who discovered what the universe is made of was born

· In 1902, Portugal went bankrupt

· In 1908, Mother’s Day was first observed in the US in the town of Grafton, WV

· In 1915, Canadian physician Cluny Macpeherson first presented his invention of the gas mask

· In 1919, former Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso was born; she was Connecticut’s first woman governor (Elected in 1975) and the 4^th woman to become governor of any state

· In 1922, the US annexed the Kingman Reef (halfway between Hawai’I and Samoa)

· In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was appointed Director of the FBI (he served until 1982)

· In 1929, actor George Coe, “Saturday Night Live” regular season1, “Archer”, “Big Eden was born

· In 1930, the first US planetarium opened (Chicago)

· In 1933, the Nazi government stage massive public book burnings

· In 1933, British novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford was born

· In 1933, Paraguay declared war on Bolivia

· In 1938, Spanish five-time grand slam champion Manuel Santana was born

· In 1940, German fighters accidentally bombed Freiberg, Germany

· In 1940, Winston Churchill became prime minister of the UK

· In 1940, country-soul singer Arthur Alexander was born

· In 1941, the German Luftwaffe damaged The House of Commons in an air raid

· In 1942, three-time NCAA champion men’s basketball coach for UConn Jim Calhoun was born

· In 1943, dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison was born

· In 1946, Scottish singer Donovan was born

· In 1946, singer/songwriter/guitarist and founder of “Traffic” Dave Mason was born

· In 1949, fashion designer Miuccia Prada was born

· In 1954, actor Mike Hagerty was born “Lucky Louie” was born

· In 1955, famed ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman was born

· In 1955, John Lennon murderer Mark David Chapman was born

· In 1957, punk rock singer and bassist Sid Vicious was born

· In 1958, former Pennsylvania senator and former presidential candidate Rick Santorum was born

· In 1959, US Senator from Mississippi Cindy Hyde-Smith was born

· In 1960, Singer-songwriter and activist Bono (U2) was born

· In 1960, the US atomic submarine Triton completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe

· In 1961, Air France Flight 406 was destroyed by a bomb over the Sahara Desert, killing 78 people

· In 1962, Marvel comics published the first issue of The Incredible Hulk

· In 1965, Canadian model Linda Evangelista was born

· In 1969, The Battle of Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill) began in the Vietnam War

· In 1972, a South Korean bus plunged into a reservoir killing 77 people

· In 1975, Sony introduced the Betamax videocassette recorder

· In 1975, Brazilian race car driver and “Dancing with the Stars” champion Helio Castroneves was born

· In 1976, Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” debuted on ABC radio

· In 1978, Actor/comedian Kenan Thompson “Saturday Night Live” was born

· In 1979, the Federated States of Micronesia became self-governing

· In 1989, General Manuel Noriega nullified Panama’s election despite losing to the opposition by 3-1 margin

· In 1993, a fire at the Kader Toy Factory killed over 200 workers in Thailand

· In 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president

· In 1994, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi formed a government with 5 neo-fascists

· In 1995, an elevator accident killed 104 miners in South Africa

· In 1996, a blizzard struck Mt. Everest, killing 8 climbers

· In 1997, a 7.3 earthquake in Northeastern Iran killed 1,567 people

· In 1998, Viktor Orban was elected prime minister of Hungary

· In 2000, India’ s population reached 1 billion people

· In 2002, an FBI agent was sentenced to life imprisonment for selling US secrets to Russia for 1.4 million in cash

· In 2005, a hand grenade was thrown at US President George Bush while he was giving a speech Tbilisi, Georgia. (It malfunctioned and did not detonate)

· In 2012, suicide bombers used car bombs in Damascus, Syria, killing 55 people

· In 2013, the One World Trade Center became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere

· In 2016, an Indian fertility clinic announced the birth of a baby boy to a 70-year old woman

· In 2020, the number of global cases of COVID-19 rose to 4 million and the death toll rose to 270,000

· In 2021, the FDA authorized the COVID-19 vaccine for those 12 to 15 years old

· In 2022, Queen Elizabeth missed the State Opening of Parliament for the first time in 59 years

· In 2022, Apple stopped producing iPods

Holidays to hold this day:

• Mother’s Day (2^nd Sunday of May) (US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Guatemala)

• Alaska Mining Day - May 10, 2026

• Boys’ Festival (Japan/Hawai’i)

• Clean Up Your Room Day

• Children’s Day--Maldives

• Confederate Memorial Day - May 10, 2026 (States of North Carolina and South Carolina)

• Constitution Day (Micronesia)

• Golden Spike Day (Promontory, Utah)

• Mother’s At the Wall Day - (Always Mother’s Day)

• National Clean Up Your Room Day

• National Lipid Day

• National Shrimp Day

• National Small Business Day

• National Veal Ban Action Day -

• One Day Without Shoes

• Trust Your Intuition Day

• World Lupus Day

A Reminder of Good in the World

This week from the BBC in Africa….

A baby hippo found desperately nudging its dead mother at a lake in Kenya over the weekend is now being hand-reared at a wildlife sanctuary after being rescued.

The calf, which has been named Bumpy, was “just days old” when it became orphaned, according to Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a charity whose keepers are now taking care of it.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), which rescued the calf and handed it over to the wildlife charity for specialised care, said the mother may have died from natural causes.

KWS said the mother hippo had visible injuries on its lower body, which are “presumed to have resulted from an encounter with another wild animal”.

“It is possible that the mother sustained fatal injuries while protecting the calf or during a naturally occurring encounter... [or it] could be an encounter with a male hippo during the mating process,” KWS told the BBC.

It said such incidents, while not routine, were not uncommon in a wild ecosystem.

KWS said rescuing the calf from the water was a “logistical challenge”, with the calf clinging to its dead mother. It said it had to make a “painful decision” to use the decomposing body “as the only anchor to safely reach the calf”.

According to Sheldrick, the mother had been dead for more than a day or longer, based on the level of decomposition.

After being rescued, the baby hippo spent its first night at a nursery in the capital Nairobi, being fed on milk and swaddled in a blanket.

The charity says Bumpy “was clearly desperate for comfort and connection” and has been glued to his keepers ever since.

The calf was later flown by helicopter to Sheldrick’s Kaluku sanctuary near Tsavo East National Park, to be taken care of until it is ready to be released into the wild.

The sanctuary has been sharing Bumpy’s story and photos at its new location – at a pool near the Athi River which runs through the park.

“[Bumpy] spends a lot of the day submerged - but never alone. A rather waterlogged keeper is by his side throughout the day, in the water or on the ground,” Sheldrick adds.

“He is a very snuggly creature and is happiest when nestled on or against someone,” the sanctuary adds, alongside a photo of the hippo with its head on the keeper’s lap.

Bumpy joins another young hippo at Kaluku who is nearly a year old, although they are being kept in different areas, the sanctuary says.

Both are expected to be released when they grow up to join other hippos living in the wild.

In the wild, a hippo calf nurses for up to a year or more but remains closely attached to its mother for several years until around sexual maturity, according to wildlife experts.

Founded in 1977, the Sheldrick Wildlife is renowned for its care of orphaned elephants and rhinos, rescuing and reintegrating them into the wild.

The charity received the first hippo under its care in December 2016 - an orphaned female named Humphretta, or Humpty. However, the young hippo died six months later.

KWS told the BBC that successful hand-rearing of a hippo was possible when undertaken by experienced wildlife professionals, with rehabilitation programs “designed to preserve their instinctive behaviours and natural affinity to water”.

It added that it had, with its conservation partners, previously rehabilitated and reintegrated other orphaned hippos successfully into the wild at the Tsavo park.

For those events, people, and acts, and for the week ahead and for what we hold in our hearts, we offer these prayers of remembrance, honor, and care. May we all work to make our world a better place.

This made me think about the president’s desire to go after anything regarding diversity. This week the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Smith College for accepting transgender woman into the historic institution. It also made me think about the gerrymandering going in Southern states to decrease democratic, especially Black, representation The connection?

When the fight you are in is a losing one, create a fight you know you can win. Senator Marsha Blackburn rushed to create new districts in Tennessee citing, “I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis. It’s essential to cement ‘@realDonaldTrump’s’ agenda and the Golden Age of America.”

Gas prices in Tennessee are over 4 dollars a gallon. It’s hard not to believe the real Golden Age of America is making more money for the super wealthy politicians. And companies. Shell has made 7 billion dollars since the war started. Thank you, Marsha, for making Shell great again.

Thank you, Department of Justice, for knowing more about education and gender than Smith College did.

But sadly, we’ve gotten used to the distractions. It’s a tactic. A strategy. Even at times a windfall.

Create some place for the energy and the anger to go that’s away from what the real problem is. We’ve been witnessing a master distractor.

We see it all the time. It’s everywhere.

We see it in our congregations all the time.

I knew a congregation where the fight was over whether the congregation should try and stay in their building which they knew they couldn’t afford or find a new place that would be less expensive. It was a hard and excruciating problem. Undoubtedly there were lots of opinions. But the minister said they chose instead to fight over where the minister should say the benediction.

Some wanted the minister to be in the front and were offended that the minister was in the back of the sanctuary. Others saw it a metaphor of the minister moving to now be of the people. Others said the minister just wanted to be in control of everything.

The minister said the intensity got so strong she would not have been surprised if blood hadn’t been drawn at some point.

But it was something people felt they themselves could control and didn’t feel powerless. It meant avoiding a conversation(s) where many people weren’t sure what was the right outcome, where it didn’t mean facing a new future, where one didn’t feel out control.

Rev. Nancy McDonald-Ladd has labeled them “fake fights.”

I think of these as “safe fights”. Even if they don’t appear to be safe to an outsider. Often the fights can be directed at the minister of a congregation because they are seen as the outsider. They feel safe, but are they?

Well, they are misdirected. I had a friend telling me about her work situation. She was expected to be creative, innovative, and detail-oriented, which she was. In some ways she was more creative than her supervisor. When she tried address the real issues going on, she was shut down. Her supervisor got anxious and defensive.

Her supervisor docked her and eventually fired her for timeliness.

Her supervisor expected her to work from 9 to 5. She had to be at her desk working at 9 and couldn’t leave before five p.m. Yet her supervisor would come in late once a week, leave early another day of the week, and was often seen strolling outside during the day. My friend she often covered for her during work.

But the presenting issue was her timeliness, which made no sense, but as I said to my friend, “She didn’t like you and/or she felt threatened by you.”

“Clearly,” my friend said.

“Don’t expect it all to make sense. The fight is rarely about the fight.”

Interestingly, three years later, when that supervisor was fired, the company reached out to her to apply and replace the supervisor. It had taken the company a couple of years to figure out the real issue. And for the supervisor’s supervisor to retire so that the real issues could be discussed.

Sometimes the safe fight is a distraction, so the real conflict doesn’t come to light. Sometimes it’s about coalitions, power, and alignments of people. My friend thanked them and liked her current job, which was less political and where she trusted the real problems were being addressed.

The clarity of being able to address the real issues now was well worth the three thousand dollars more she might get if she took the new job.

The safe fight often isn’t so safe. It has ripple effects. Yet it feels safer to those with power than dealing with the real conflict and issues. And one to keep power is to create another fight and disguise the real issues.

I think we’re seeing that now. So much anxiety. So much defensiveness in the form of lashing out. And so much trying to create a distraction fight.

Let’s get mad at trans people who simply want to be athletic and live as the gender they understand them to be. (And we’re talking about a total pool of people likely under 100 worldwide at the moment). Let’s redistrict since we can’t solve the problem of gas prices.

We’d probably be better at conflict if we were able to deal with the real conflict, even if it’s to say, I don’t know what the real conflict is and start there.

Until then, we’re likely to see more fights about benedictions, trans people, and whatever else we perceive to be threatening. These fights are hardly safe.

I was watching the news when a Republican lawmaker was asked about high gas prices now and he told the reporter to be patient. The reporter then quoted the lawmaker from a few years before complaining about gas prices during the last presidential administration. At the time the gas prices he was complaining about were a dollar cheaper than they are now. He replied to the question something along the lines of “I don’t have to talk to you right now,” touched his arm and walked away.

Oops.

Granted in 1861 there weren’t hundreds of news outlets where you could pick and choose how and who you talked to as a politician like there is now. And to be fair some Republicans would not even speak to non-conservative news outlet. And would a Democrat do the same in a similar circumstance?

Well, I actually think that “retreat” is a human condition. We often see it in polarity with extreme aggressive. The cornered animal who attacks is an example.

I saw it happen in congregations. A board would not be relationship with the rest of the congregation. Those involved in religious education would be in their own community and not really interact with anyone else and then be mad that no one “got them”. The social justice committee who wanted everyone on board with them but instead getting frustrated with questions over what they were doing and what the commitment expectations were.

I think some of the most extreme examples I saw were search committees initially in my work. Often the search committee was so locked up in their own world and their perception of who the congregation was in their minds had lost touch with the congregation. They would get caught up in their internal ideals.

A prospective minister would interview with the search committee and believe to have gotten a good handle on what the congregation wanted from ministry. Then they’d be surprised at the disconnect they found, often after they’d arrived to serve the congregation, between what the search committee presented to them, and what they found to be real.

One of the common pieces of advice from ministers that began to circulate to those in search was the incredulous question, “You actually believed your search committee?”

So, we stressed staying connected with the wider congregation and the interim minister during the search process. Once I was told that was going to be a lot of work. Sure, I responded, but the diligence may mean you’re not back in search again in three years because the minister missed information, lost trust in the search committee, and decided for something that felt more like what they had hoped for and been told was true.

We often tighten our circles because it feels safer, yet that’s often its own polarity. The wisdom of having more connection and information makes intuitive sense but it may not feel comfortable or safe. Yet it may be safer, more productive, and ultimately better.

It’s not always though about safety. Sometimes it’s about those ideals. The Litmus Test.

For years, the Republican Party said it was a “Big Tent.” Now, you may be only one disagreement away from whipping out your golf umbrella and wandering aimlessly why you aren’t allowed in.

The Democratic Party until recently had a harder time with being the “Big Tent” party and often seemed to project a line that could not be crossed. A Kentucky Democrat had to look and talk like a San Francisco Democrat. Now, it’s Republicans who are clearly towing a party line. As promised the president “Primaried” the Indiana Republicans who refused to gerrymander, and he was successful…in the Republican primaries this week. We’ll see if this plays out well in the fall and across states. All the gerrymandering could backfire.

And why it could backfire is about messaging as much as anything else. It says my priority is to be re-elected and not accountable to voters. It will be interesting to see if newly elected representatives next year will be referred to as representing a Gerrymandered District.

As we’ve seen the more of a one-sided district you’re in, the less likely you are to interact with the other side.

The same is true for congregations. Historically, they’ve been called committees. In some ways, this was a little better since it resembled more of a parliamentary system than a two-party system. But we’d also see committees shrink and shrink because they become rigid about what they believed.

I was working years ago with a Welcoming Congregation committee made up of 8 women and one man. The committee had one lesbian and one gay man. I met with them and discovered that two of the women had taken the rest of the committee hostage. They had created a litmus test of what you needed to believe in order to be on the committee. They could recite their test song and verse.

The minister had asked me to meet with the committee as she had not been able to help them herself. She had also wanted someone else to help the lesbian woman in particular who not only felt she had to meet the litmus test but also felt like a poster child for the committee.

So, I preached at the congregation and met with the committee after church. I still think of that weekend as my trip to Gilligan’s Island. What was supposed to have been an hour meeting ended up being a three-hour tour. One where people felt trapped on the island as well as lost.

The two women wanted everyone to hold such a high standard that nosebleeds were possible. There were a ton of words that couldn’t be said. There were phrases not to be used. There were things the congregation “had to learn.”

Interestingly, I didn’t disagree with anything they said. I just didn’t think the rest of the congregation was there and was going to get there with an ultimatum. Indeed, I’d talked with the lesbian, who liked the church and the people, wanted to help out, but she had never lived in a place that adhered to the standards of these two women. In fact, it made her more uncomfortable than supported.

She did appreciate what the women were trying to do. But she also had never seen people just “get it”. She also felt like they were doing it to prove how noble and right they were on some level. Something she could never figure out how to say.

I’d seen this before. I’d seen it around race where a white person would have the “aha” moment and then crucified any person who didn’t. But then that is predictable. Most every denomination will tell you their converts are more fervent than those who’d been with the religion their whole lives. The same is true causes.

In this meeting, I felt like my job was to get people to speak freely, or at least freer. I asked people to share some of their interactions with others in the congregation over the work. Of course, the two women had to speak first. They talked of the ignorance they faced. (It was the late 90s). I asked others if they experienced this. And I added the question, “Was anyone hostile or unkind? Or was it more because they were oblivious and this was newer to them.?”

That got a lot of agreement. Both the lesbian and the gay man talked about how kind everyone had been, that this was one place where they didn’t feel threatened or unsafe. Yes, people would say something that seemed clueless, but no one was malicious. I asked how often this happened and the gay man said, “Maybe once a month.” The lesbian agreed. They both said they were happy to have a place to just be themselves.

I noticed everyone got that, except for the two women whose stridency had not abated. They were a little annoyed at the two of them, but their own litmus test prevented them from speaking their annoyance directly at them. But it clearly bubbled just under the surface and added tension.

Eventually, we took a break. The lesbian found me snacking and whispered, “Do you see why I don’t want to really be here?” I laughed and asked, “And you’ve not been able to say that?” She shook her head.

I told her I thought the congregation’s efforts to be a Welcoming Congregation might be better served if she left this committee. She looked at me. I told her that I would summarize what I’d experienced after the break alongside my work with other congregations and give her an out. I told her she wasn’t letting the work down if she left. She might actually be helping it.

On return, I said I was impressed with the high standards I’d heard and that I’d never encountered a congregation like them in that way. Yet I’d seen and worked with other congregations that had gone on to accomplish what they wanted. I encouraged them to think of the work in stages and that given where they were in the Midwest that they would be in a better position to be two or three steps ahead of where their city was, as oppose to ten for a start.

Since two committee members were in the choir, I used the example of a good music teacher being able to improve and expand a range of singer but would not be able to get the singer to a range of 8 octaves immediately and probably didn’t have that themselves. It would take time.

People nodded, except the two women, one of whom said, “We can’t compromise what’s right.” At this point I was given the opening. The lesbian woman sighed, the exasperation bubbling out.

“Do you even want to be here?” I asked her directly. “You don’t have to be. You can support the work by simply being a member of the congregation that people like and interact with.”

To my great surprise, she thanked me. She said she wanted to support the work but just didn’t want to be on the committee anymore.

I told her I got that, and I wouldn’t think her leaving as a betrayal. She was a church member like everyone else and she got to choose how she spent her time. And then she said good-bye and left.

There was silence for a second before the other strident woman said, “Well, maybe we’ll get more done.” I suspected others would leave after that, though not that day.

Within a month, the committee disbanded. A year later, a new group reformed, this time without the two women, and they sailed through the process. Instead of having a set of standards and demands, they just engaged people where they were. The lesbian woman rejoined the committee. As did 15 others. They represented a wide range in the congregation of people who simply wanted their congregation to be a better place for everyone. It was a litmus test everyone could agree to.

It doesn’t have to be a team of rivals, but getting people together of any kind does mean finding a litmus test that everyone can agree to and connections to others, even when you don’t agree.

It doesn’t mean you don’t keep your standards, but it might mean you don’t try and make your standards everyone else’s without conversation, buy-in, and honest mutuality. There can be all kinds of ways to be in the same tent.

My concern is whether they think this will solve the problem or at least send a wake-up call to hire a better person for the position. I don’t think that’s likely. It might make a marginal difference, or it might get worse. I do think for example that MarkWayne Mullins is slightly better for Homeland Security than Kristi Noem, simply because he has more relationships with those in Congress. I don’t think Todd Blanche is better than Pam Bondi. In fact, I think it’s actually worse. But I don’t think he’s that far off from Pam either.

We like to believe that a person is the problem, when in fact, it’s more likely how someone fits into a system, and what expectations the system has of them. People adapt to the systems they are in and learn what it means to belong by adapting to the system.

In the president’s first term, he was often stymied by the system. In his second, with help from others, he figured out how to manipulate the system into something else. How?

One he had time to prepare. We might actually not have seen as much damage, though it’s hard to say for sure, had he been reelected in 2020. But four years away allowed the time to think of a new plan. Two, he had time to find people for the new system, those he trusted and could hand-pick. Three, now the new people have a better read on how to carryout the president’s bidding.

Indeed, we’ve not only seen it here. I’ve heard several experts caution about Russia—that whoever might replace Putin is likely to be worse. I think that’s probably true in a lot of autocracies where the people outside of the front-facing sphere, who’ve been making money quietly, while having access to power, are likely to just want more power without a sense of responsibility.

We also see this in congregational life.

The most striking example came when I got a call from a minister who had been serving his congregation for a few years. He was trying to figure out some of the animosity he was receiving. He called me because I had known the congregation for decades, if from afar. Still, my memory is pretty good.

We talked for a while about some of what he was seeing and the culture of the congregation. There had been ministerial sexual misconduct back in the 1960s and fairly severely. After that the congregation had not employed a white heterosexual man until my colleague’s current call.

He told me while there hadn’t been staff misconduct of any kind that he had learned since then, the congregation still had a hard time trusting its male staff. He was also concerned about one man who seemed to want to introduce himself to every new woman who walked into the church, especially if they were by themselves and younger—this despite being older.

I asked, “Oh, is John still around doing that?”

This drew a silence and he told me the person’s name, which wasn’t John.

I then gave an explanation that I had remembered John when I’d visited the congregation in the late 1990s and described what he looked like. I had remembered the minister at the time had tipped me off as to her suspicions and John had done nothing to allay them when I met him. He had made me uneasy, particularly as his eyes darted around the room as we talked. I had no doubts he was scouting.

The minister described the person who was doing this now, and what he was doing in the congregation. It sounded much like what I’d been told years before. I learned the congregation really hadn’t addressed this in their work and had largely tried to circumvent the man by having others tell newer woman to just avoid him. Or even, as the minister told me, flirt back, laugh, and then walk away, as at least two women in the congregation did.

The minister asked what should be done. I suggested that what needed to happen was that congregation needed to own the problem and determine its own boundaries as opposed to testing his. I asked if he had a few folks in the congregation, perhaps therapists or teachers, who could function as the adults in the room who might be able to lead the congregation toward a systematic change of expectations around boundaries. He thought he did.

I suggested it was better if the lead for this came from the congregation and not from him as the congregation would ultimately more likely own it and live it. Then he could be seen as the minister supporting congregants who wanted this as opposed to the person tried to change their system. Their system would respond better to change from within as opposed to someone who they probably thought of as a bit more of an outsider, at least by some.

I asked if there had been any Our Whole Lives sexuality education that had happened recently as the program had terrific work on boundaries and helping people feel safe. He said they just completed the junior high version. I asked if they had ever done this for adults?

He said he hadn’t heard of that, but he would ask. I asked if any of this had come up with the search committee or when he had met the congregation. He told me they had mentioned the ministerial misconduct but hadn’t said much about anything since, though one person had told him she wished the congregation was better at welcoming new people when they first came but didn’t say anything specific.

I asked what happen when the man’s name, the who currently greets the woman, comes up in meetings if it all. There was quiet for a moment as the minister tried to recall. He then said it didn’t come up much, though, and he paused again, I do remember one time when it came up and several women exchanged glances with each other. No one though had said anything aloud.

I said this would be a great moment to find one of the therapists in the congregation who could be trusted and ask them why no one talked about this person’s behavior. He said there was one such person who was clearly above reproach.

Two weeks later, I heard from the minister again. He told me that he had learned that the man I mention had died some years ago. And then about a year later this man began doing the same thing that John had done. The minister wondered if the new man had been biding his time.

It sounded like that to me. Most predators were opportunists. I suspected and shared my concerns that while John had made women uncomfortable and probably kept a lot of women from return visits to the congregation, he’d only gotten to the “leery” stage and never actually done worse than that. Was that true for the current man there? As far as the minister knew it was.

I told him this was possibly why he was bearing the brunt of the mistrust. That a previous minister had done something significantly worse than either of these men and probably made the congregation “close ranks” and distrust male ministers more and give more leeway to those they saw as their own.

Focusing on a person as the problem, whether it be in a congregation or the government, rarely solves the problem. In fact, it’s easier to manipulate a system as the president has done than it is to change it. Fewer people are watching. And the system has to want to change. That takes time especially after many years of either resistance or indifference.

I did see the ministers a few years later and he told me things were better. I hope they are still getting better.

But until the system decides it needs to get change, places will likely continue to blame a person and see little long-term change. As Dorothy Parker said famously, “Life isn’t one thing after another. It’s one damned thing over and over.”

Until we decide things have to be better, which I think we are, we’ll keep doing the same things over and over as a country. It has to come from us. We may forget for a while, like we have, but the systematic problems will come back.

To change, we have to build support not only from those who know it should be better, but we also have to educate people that it could be better and how.

Hence, the important words, “We the people”. It’s up to us.

Still, she was preparing for ministry and was a connoisseur of both food and beverage. She was great at making people laugh. I could see her in formal attire waiting tables, so I had some hope she could pull it off. The pay was really good, and that would be an additional motivation.

Alas, after two weeks on the job, she learned from the manager that she was being let go. Disappointed, she asked why she was being let go. She was told, “Your personality is too big for fine dining.”

And that was that.

I always loved that story because it had the twin hallmarks of being direct, informational, and diplomatic. My friend knew exactly what the manager was saying to her. In fact, the truth of it had made her laugh. Yet, it hadn’t been taken as overt criticism. It relayed the reality of the culture the restaurant wanted and let my friend know that she hadn’t been able to work within the expectations of the culture.

I’ve thought about that story when I hear now that there is no war, we’re in a ceasefire, or even a mini-war. Negotiations are going well one day. Then the next day there are stories the US will obliterate Iran. It’s not only confusing at best, but this also feels like manipulation and even gaslighting. Rarely are any of these well received.

As a child I remember a time when you played with the antennae ears of your television, sometimes even slapping the side of it to get it to try and focus into a clear picture. I feel like many of us are at a moment with our country where we want to slap it back into focus. Of course, back then, we only had 3 or 4 channels if we were lucky. Now we have hundreds of if not thousands of options.

And there’s the difference between a reframing and “spin.”

A reframe gives you a wanted way of looking at new things. Even when it may not have been the answer you wanted. A spin is an attempt to manipulate either into someone’s way of thinking, to at least get you to be less sure about what you know, or simply wants to you to be confused. Because when you’re confused, you’re less clear about what you know to be true and then less decisive.

I think of it as the continuum of Open to Closed. A reframe opens you to possibilities and allows you more control. Manipulation closes down and gives you less control.

A lot of my work with congregations who were in search was to reframe their experience of something that happened. If the congregation had fired their minister or the minister had departed, they wanted to put a positive spin on it. I felt like a lot of my work was to get them to tell not the truth, but the truths of what had happened.

I would ask, “Did some people like the minister? Were some congregants surprised you the minister left?” Invariably that got a “yes”. And then I’d hear others were relieved the minister had gone. Then I’d ask if there was conflict in the congregation over this? That would also get a yes.

Those on the search committee would want to put a positive spin on what happened. They thought their pool of potential ministers would shrink if they weren’t positive. I would always counter with that their pool would shrink if they weren’t honest.

Wouldn’t that be messy? I would be asked.

Well, I’d respond, it is. But prospective ministers are likely going to talk with the outgoing minister and anyone else who knows of the congregation. Potential ministers would rather hear the honesty of the conflict than walk into a situation and discover conflict later after being told things were fine.

I would add the reframing of what happened through a complex honesty would be more appealing than a rosy manipulated picture that all was well. In fact, I would add, honesty is the second most appealing thing in what ministers see.

What would be first? I would be asked. A good salary. (This would either bring laughter or a moment of confusion followed be a realization that ministry was work that people got paid for.)

I would also say being presented with a rosy picture of a congregation would make every minister concerned about manipulation. And manipulation to many ministers was interpreted a sign of desperation.

That made someone gasp one time when I said that. I asked the group to consider why people manipulated. Finally, after a silence someone said, “to gain control.” I nodded. “That makes me think they probably felt out of control.”

“But we do feel out of control.”

This was getting good. “Absolutely.” There was silence, but I continued, “your congregation has had a history of ministerial misconduct. The minister who did misconduct manipulated the situation 30 years ago when he could. Now, you’re worried it could happen again. Are you more likely to get it by telling yourselves all you need is the perfect minister who then finds out you’re not perfect, or if you need a minister to help you reframe what good and healthy ministry is based on your history and the division within the congregation?”

By reframing the situation, that search committee had more options. It was scary, but it wasn’t crazy making. The congregation was still reacting to what had happened thirty years before. They would later tell me, after they had been more honest, that the conversations with potential minister had given them hope as opposed to apprehension, that they saw a partner going forward as opposed to someone who was supposed to do something for them, or worse to them. Several ministers thanked them for their candor and for not putting a spin on what was going on.

I would see this happen a lot. The reframe opened the congregation up. A manipulation would close a congregation down. The same for ministers.

The minister, whose personality was too big for fine dining, was grateful someone had told her the truth. Besides, her big personality was needed elsewhere.

But whether we’re in a war, a mini-war, or at ceasefire, it all feels like manipulation. And dishonesty. You can only cry wolf for so long before people walk away.

Gas prices out of control. It was only months ago I saw gas prices under 3 dollars a gallon. Now I see prices approaching and even exceeding 4.50 a gallon. We get told they will come down when the war is over.

Yet we’ve been told hostilities have stopped. We’re now waiting on a deal to be finalized which depending on who speaks is either promising or not close to a deal at all. In fact, they are not negotiating. We are not at war, apparently, but have been told we are preparing to give a strong response to Iran.

We live in a world where Meta (Facebook’s parent organization) recently announced layoffs of thousands of people to allow more money for Artificial Intelligence in a country with no regulations and where the CEOs of AI companies want no regulations, while they compete to be bigger billionaires.

And government officials that confuse presenting a calm, “we’ve got it” demeanor when they don’t have any clue what the average American is dealing with. They claim the stock market is good, though they don’t say that the top 10% of American households own 93% of the stocks. That means fifty-two percent of Americans own the other 7% of the stocks while 38% of Americans have no stock. But things are ok. You’d think the top 10% would have enough money to “buy a vowel” while instead they try and rig the puzzle.

We have multiple No Kings Rallies going on. An autocrat in Hungary was swept out of office in a landslide. Yet the president continues with renovating the White House, demolishing history in the process. He’s excited by the colors. And he tries to sell the idea more after being a mostly unwanted guest at an event that he didn’t host where someone tried to harm him.

He’s more interested in going after perceived enemies and punishing them.

And the president now believes he’s going for political greatness. Uh, right.

Meanwhile congressional representatives seem more invested in keeping a job where they don’t seem to do much and are more focused on the politics of all that than actually serving the people who elected them. Let them eat cake.

This Sunday 252 years ago Marie Antoinette ascended to the throne in France. She never actually said the phrase “let them eat cake” but the meaning of the attribution was clear: I don’t care.

What does it mean to live in a country where the leaders don’t care or care less about whom they serve than themselves? We’re finding out.

I just keep thinking about the toll this is having on all of us. I was listening to Ana Navarro on The View this morning and she was talking about being in Miami riding in Ubers who voted for the president who now thinks he’s crazy.

The erosion of trust has led to a race to the bottom. The current administration has done its best job in eroding trust in their opponents and now themselves. It’s what they do well.

And the acceleration in the last year and a half has been extraordinary. We may be able to attribute some of it to the age of the president, which is both wrong and will affect others of his age who may be in better shape. But that may mitigate some of the erosion. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next president isn’t in their 40’s or 50’s.

But the level of trust that has been broken is spreading. I believe we are going to see more violence, more animosity, and more organized resistance. I’m really praying for the latter. The problem with the latter is that it will take time, which I fear we all feel like we’re running out time. I think this happens when what feels like insanity never lets up.

And even if it does let up, the residual effects won’t be gone for a while.

I saw this in congregations. When there has been destruction in a congregation from misconduct, abuse, or negligence, it stays in the congregational system. People remember and react against anything that feels or echoes similarly. I think we’re going to see that as well.

One solution to all of this for congregations is to have a series of quiet, dependable ministers who simply do the basics of ministry well. By example, I am reminded of the education advice I got early on in teaching. “It takes 4 positives to overcome a negative thing you say as a teacher.” In more severely damaged places, four would be a low number.

The problem becomes that would be 16 years minimum.

Though if we look at US history, we see that after the Great Depression we elected the same president 4 times. Then his vice-president. Then a general who was courted by both parties.

Then a young president, who was assassinated. Then a war that no one liked, a president who wanted to be an autocrat and had to be pardoned.

But then the US was never expected to succeed as a democracy. Outside observers thought it was over when Jefferson defeated Adams in 1800. Somehow, we survived.

We’ve survived four presidents being assassinated. Lincoln was assassinated for emancipating slaves. Garfield was assassinated by a man with mental health issues who thought he should have been hired by the president. McKinley was assassinated for being seen as a symbol of corporate oppression. Kennedy’s assassination is less clear as some thought the assassin had communist leanings while others say he was mad at Kennedy over Cuba.

We’ve survived Nixon and Harding and Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Jackson. They join the current president as being the list as most corrupt.

But I also think we need to think beyond survival. We’re just shy of 20% of all presidents being assassinated or corrupt.

If this were a congregation’s history, they’d dwindle. They’d likely go without a minister and do it themselves. Probably until the congregation died or decided to do things completely differently.

But sometimes it takes hitting bottom or seeing the bottom before you decide not to drown.

At some point we will stop trying to not drown, not tread water, and just swim. But what will it take for us all, and not just the few, to enjoy the beach? Especially when it feels like the sharks are circling all the time and we’re the ones bleeding.

Now it’s time to figure out how we heal. Otherwise, we’ll just rinse it off and repeat.

It reminds me of my favorite quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.” Let’s think about how we can stop the insanity. Both the big things and the little things. Because it will take both.

Let us enter into a spirit of care, remembrance, and prayer for the world, for our country, for those who have impact on our lives, and for the unfolding of care, innovation and discovery of life. Let us honor those people and events that have come before us as we look toward the possibilities of what may come and what we can create.

Prayers for the World

We pray for an end to the war in Iran. We pray for peace for Lebanon and for those who have died there during the ongoing ceasefire. We pray for the United Arab Emirates in its decision to leave OPEC. May peace, calm, and good will prevail. We pray that Congress can vote on the War Powers Act and chooses to represent the people and not the president.

We continue to pray for the people in Ukraine.

We pray for those in Cuba enduring life without power and limited food.

We pray for worldwide free journalism. Paris’ Reporters without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) reports that Freedom of the press around the world has fallen to its lowest level in a quarter of a century. For the first time since RSF started producing the index in 2002, more than half of the world’s countries fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom – “a clear sign that journalism is increasingly criminalised worldwide”. The US has fallen into the “problematic” category. Seven Nordic countries fall into the “good” category. RSF reported that more than 60 percent of countries – 110 out of 180 – have criminalized media workers in various ways,

We pray for those affected by the explosion on a bus in Colombia this week. At least 14 people died, and 40 people were injured.

We pray for the city government of Amsterdam which has banned advertisements for high carbon products and meat products on it public transportation.

We pray with gratitude for the message Britain’s King Charles gave to the US and the world this week.

We pray for an end to the antisemitic attacks in London. At least two people have been stabbed.

We pray for those in Cajibio, Colombia, where a bombing of a bus killed 26 people and injured 36 others. The highway where the attack occurred remains closed.

We pray with those who protested around the world and in the US on Friday as part of the May Day protests.

We pray for the Indigenous people of Australia where a 5-year-old Indigenous girl was murdered in Alice Springs. Riots have broken out. A suspect has been taken in custody, someone who had previously been arrested for other assaults.

We pray for those who were shot in a gunfire attack in Athens, Greece, this week. Four people were injured.

We continue to pray for peace and end to violence in Mali. Attacks from Al-Qaeda have been ongoing for over a week.

We pray with gratitude for New Zealand who has changed its blood donation rules to allow gay and bisexual men to donate blood.

We pray with relief for the New Zealand court’s decision to not overturn the convictions of the man who killed 51 people in two mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch.

We pray with gratitude for Algeria which has become the 29^th country to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem. The disease causes blindness in those affected. The disease is endemic in 30 countries and has led to sight loss in 1.9 million people.

We pray with gratitude for the European Union Parliament which has voted to ban conversion therapy.

We pray for the citizens of Alberta where a massive breech of voter roles occurred this week.

We pray for those affected by the worldwide tariffs placed by the United States government both abroad and in the US.

Prayers for the United States

We pray for those affected by rising prices and those making difficult choices about the way they live their lives as a result.

We pray for democracy and for fair representation in our country following the end of the voting rights act (except in name) decided by the Supreme Court along partisan lines. May racial gerrymandering not return.

We pray for immigrants, especially children, as The Guardian reports that ICE has awarded a contract to a private security company that has faced accusations of “torture” and “enforced disappearance” to assist in tracking down undocumented immigrant children who arrived in the US alone, a contracting document shows. May no one be tortured or live in terror.

We pray with gratitude for the security at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner that prevented tragedy.

We pray for those affected by the tornadoes in Texas where the storms have caused major building damage.

We pray for the police officer who was killed and the other officer critically injured at a Chicago hospital this week by a person in custody getting medical attention.

We pray for former FBI Director James Comey and for his safety and for a credible Department of Justice that does not prosecute presidential critics.

We pray with gratitude for the SunZia solar farm, the first of its kind in California which has now opened and can provide power for over 1 million homes.

We pray for the people of the Corpus Christi, Texas, are facing a water crisis due to a yearlong drought. The city could be out of water by this summer.

We pray for those on Medicaid in Nebraska as the state begins work-required mandates for recipients.

We pray for those women who have received mifepristone through mail as Louisiana court has said receiving of these drugs through the mail is no longer legal. May health care be available to all women.

We pray with gratitude that the US Senate has banned its members and staff from betting on prediction markets. We pray the rest of the government follows suit.

We pray for the customers of Spirit Airlines as the shutdown of air service strands many. We pray for the 17,000 staff who find themselves without work.

We pray for those affected by the violent bank robbery in Berea, Kentucky. At least two people were shot and killed by the bank robber.

We pray with gratitude for the end of Alex Jones’ InfoWars and disinformation from the site. May The Onion make better use of the site.

Prayers For Those Who Have Impact on our Lives

We remember Tony Wilson, the co-founder, bassist, and songwriter of British band Hot Chocolate, who died this week at age 89.

We remember Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving member of 1960s pop band the Ronettes, who died this week at age 80.

We remember singer-songwriter country music artist David Allan Coe who died this week at age 86.

We remember scientist and pioneer of modern genomics, J. Craig Venter, who died this week of complications related to cancer at age 79.

We remember Paralympic Gold Medalist in para-cycling and former Formula One race car driver, Alex Zanardi, who died this week at age 59.

We congratulate London Marathon winner, Sabastian Sawe of Kenya, who ran the race in a record-setting time, breaking under 2 hours. The second-place finisher, Ehtiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha, was also under 2 hours. This is the first time a marathon has been run in under 2 hours. The third-place finisher, Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, who finished in 2 hours and 28 seconds still broke the previous marathon record. We congratulate Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa who won the women’s event.

Prayers for Unfolding Care, Innovation and Discovery of Life

We pray for the science released this week that created the first map of smell receptors in the nose. The breakthrough could pave the way for therapies to treat loss of smell, such as stem cell treatments or brain-computer interfaces.

We pray for the new malaria drug approved for infants by the World Health Organization, the first of its kind.

We pray with gratitude for UNICEF, WHO, and other organizations that has played catch-up an delivered over 100 million vaccines to 18 million children in 36 countries. Fifteen million of these children had never received any vaccine. Countless lives will be saved.

We pray with gratitude for findings that reported that Europe’s Moringa tree species, used by ancient Egyptians to purify water, rid current drinking water of 98% of the microplastics in the water. May the findings lead to cleaner, safer water for all.

We pray for the humpback whale, “Timmy” that was transported from shallow waters of the Baltic Sea and released to the North Sea.

We Honor Our History on this Day, and Pray to Remember what These People and Events Have Informed Us

We honor with prayer the events and the lives of people born on this day in history May we celebrate the contributions, remember those who died, and learn from the harm that was the done:

· In 1374, BCE a solar eclipse enveloped Mesopotamia

· In 1469, author Nicholas Machiavelli “The Prince” was born

· In 1481, the island of Rhodes is struck by three earthquakes, causing an estimated 30,000 casualties

· In 1616, the Treaty of Loudun ended the French Civil War

· In 1715, a total solar eclipse was visible across northern Europe and Asia

· IN 1765, the first American medical college opened in Philadelphia

· In 1802, Washington, D.C, was incorporated as a city

· In 1803, Napolean Bonaparte sold the Louisiana Purchase to the US

· In 1830, the first regular steam train passenger service began (in South Carolina)

· In 1837, the University of Athens was founded in Greece, becoming the first modern university in the Eastern Mediterranean

· In 1841, New Zealand was proclaimed a colony independent of New South Wales

· In 1845, Macon B. Allen became the first African American lawyer, admitted to the bar of Massachusetts

· In 1846, the Mexican Army began the Siege of Fort Texas during the Mexican-American War

· In 1851, a major fire in San Francisco (the city’s sixth) destroyed over 1500 buildings

· In 1855, the Antwerp-Rotterdam railway opened

· In 1861, President Lincoln extended a call for 42,000 army volunteers and 18,000 seamen

· In 1867, the Hudson Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island

· In 1876, riots broke out in Indianapolis when Whites tried to keep Blacks from voting

· In 1886, Vancouver, BC, elected its first mayor

· In 1896, English author and playwright Dodie Smith (“101 Dalmatians”) was born

· In 1898, former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir was born

· In 1901, the Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida

· In 1903, singer/actor Bing Crosby (“White Christmas”) was born

· In 1906, actress Mary Astor (“The Maltese Falcon”) was born

· In 1910, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association was renamed as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

· In 1912, poet and novelist May Sarton was born

· In 1917, actor George Gaynes (“Tootsie” “Punky Brewster”) was born

· In 1919, singer/songwriter/activist Pete Seeger was born

· In 1920, jazz pianist and composer John Lewis was born

· In 1921, Britain partitions Ireland and Northern and Southern Island

· In 1921, West Virginia became the first state to legislate a sales tax

· In 1921, heavyweight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson was born

· In 1923, the first nonstop North American transcontinental flight was completed (New York to San Diego)

· In 1933, singer-songwriter, funk musician James Brown was born

· In 1934, singer/crooner Frankie Valli was born

· In 1937, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

· In 1938 the concentration camp at Flossenbürg opened

· In 1938, Hitler and Mussolini met in Rome

· In 1941, Nazi Germany conducted an air raid on Liverpool, England

· In 1942, Nazi Germany bombed and destroyed the town center of Exeter, England

· In 1942, the Nazi required Dutch Jews to wear a yellow star

· In 1942, Nazis executed 71 Dutch resistance fighters at Sachsenhausen concentration camp

· In 1942, Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island (part of the Solomon Islands)

· In 1946, sportscaster Greg Gumbel was born

· In 1946, the International military tribunal began in Tokyo

· In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution limiting the powers of the emperor and forbidding the country from going to War

· In 1948, the US Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that real estate sales that encouraged segregated housing were unconstitutional

· In 1948 the “CBS Evening News: was broadcast for the first time

· In 1951, Grammy-winning singer Christopher Cross was born

· In 1952, the Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time on national television

· In 1952, a plane landed at the North Pole for the first tiem

· IN 1956, a new mountain range was discovered in Antarctica (with two peaks over 13,000 feet)

· In 1957, the owner of the Dodgers agreed to move the baseball team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles

· In 1960, the Achterhuis, a museum dedicated to the life of Anne Frank opened in Amsterdam

· In 1960, The Fantasticks opened in New York City, the first of 17,162 consecutive performances (42 years). The off-Broadway musical holds the record for the longest run of all time

· In 1963, transmitted images of the “Birmingham campaign” (the police use of violent force to stop protesters—the use of high-pressure hoses and dogs) go worldwide and brought new-found attention to the civil rights movement

· In 1968, Braniff Flight 352 crashed near Dawson, Texas, killing 85 people

· In 1971, President Nixon authorized the arrest of 13,000 anti-war protesters

· In 1971, NPR began broadcasting

· In 1975, television journalist and host Willie Geist was born

· In 1975, actress Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) was born

· In 1978, the first spam email was sent

· In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of the United Kingdom

· In 1986, a bomb exploded on Air Lanka Flight 512 killing 21 people and injuring 41 others in Sri Lanka

· In 1990, former golf number one- and five-time major champion Brooks Koepka was born

· In 1991, the final episode of the 356-run of “Dallas” was shown

· In 1999, an F5 tornado hit Oklahoma City devastating the southwestern part of the city, killing 45 people, and injuring 665 others. One of 66 tornadoes in an outbreak, the cumulative damage was over 1 billion dollars in damage.

· In 2000, the sport of geocaching began

· In 2002, “Spider-Man” starring Tobey Maquire as Peter Parker premiered in theaters

· In 2003, New Hampshire’s famous rock “Old Man of the Mountain” collapsed

· In 2006, Armavia Flight 657 crashed in to the Back Sea near Sochi, Russia, killing 113 people

· In 2016, wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alberta, caused the evacuation of 88,000 people. Around 2400 buildings and homes were destroyed

· In 2018, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ members voted to expel Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski

· In 2019, Cyclone Fani killed 33 people in India and Bangladesh. Over 1.2 million people were forced to evacuate

· In 2020, Brazil confirmed its 100,000 COVID-19 case

· In 2021, an elevated section of Mexico City Metro collapsed killed 26 people and injuring 98 others

· In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency took significant steps to limit hydrofluorocarbons over the next 15 years

· In 2023, a school shooting in Belgrade, Serbia, killed nine students and security guard (the first school shooting in that country)

· In 2023, the Kremlin suffered a mysterious drone attack

· In 2025, the largest concert for a female artist was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when 2.5 million people attended a free Lady Gaga concert

Holidays to hold this day:

• AAPI Women’s Equal Pay Day

• Constitution Memorial Day

• Cross Day (El Salvador)

• Garden Meditation Day

• International Baby Lost Mother’s Day (First Sunday in May)

• International Bereaved Mother’s Day (First Sunday in May)

• International Permaculture Day (First Sunday in May)

• International Wild Koala Day

• Lemonade Day - (First Sunday in May)

• Lumpy Rug Day

• Mayday for Mutts -(First Sunday in May)

• Motorcycle Mass and Blessings of the Bike (First Sunday in May)

• National Chocolate Custard Day

• National Garden Meditation Day

• National Infertility Survival Day (First Sunday in May)

• National Lemonade Day

• National Lumpy Rug Day

• National Montana Day

• National Public Radio Day

• National Paranormal Day

• National Raspberry Popover Day

• National Ride a Bike Day (First Sunday in May)

• National SAN Architect Day

• National Specially-abled Pets Day

• National Textile Day

• National Two Different Colored Shoes Day

• Paranormal Day

• Rural Life Sunday (First Sunday in May)

• Sun Day

• Wordsmith Day

• World Laughter Day (First Sunday in May)

• World Press Freedom Day

A Reminder of Good in the World

It’s been almost two years since 11-year-old Caleb Devereaux Jr. — affectionately named “Junior” — passed away from leukemia in the town of Abilene, Texas. But to his family, friends, and neighbors, his memory has never faded.

“He taught me a lot about how to be friendly to everyone, to hearing people and deaf people, and build those friendships, and also to see students as the whole person,” Letabeth Machogu, Junior’s former teacher, told local news. “Yes, we’re learning academics, but we can take time to be fun and be silly, too. Yeah, it’s really important. He means a lot to me.”

Machogu teaches deaf and hard of hearing students at Ward Elementary, and Junior was one of her favorite pupils.

Junior was deaf from an early age, but he quickly mastered American Sign Language, which opened “a world of communication and connection with those around him.”

“His radiant smile could light up any room, and he found immense joy in spending quality time with his family and friends.”

A few short months before he passed from leukemia, Junior had just completed fifth grade.

“When I came back after he passed, I was very angry because I just kept thinking that he should be here,” said Machogu.

Last summer, Machogu installed a new playground sign at Ward Elementary that was inspired by Junior’s playful and outgoing attitude. It has the alphabet in ASL, as well as the hand signs for phrases like “friend,” “play,” “tag,” “share,” and more.

The sign was designed and manufactured by Language Priority, a deaf-owned business dedicated to raising awareness about deafness, language acquisition, American Sign Language, and the Deaf community at large.

Since its installation, hearing students have been able to play with their deaf classmates more freely. “They can communicate with each other directly with our students who use sign language, and then they can play together without having to have an interpreter there to facilitate all the communication,” Machogu said. “They can have a direct friendship without having a third party. You know, that is so important.”

Etched into the top of the sign are the words: “In loving memory of Caleb Jr.”

“I think he’d be proud,” Machogu said. “I picture him looking at me like, ‘Thank you, I love it.’ That’s what he would say.”

Even knowing a handful of basic signs can help bridge divides between the Deaf and hearing world — especially when it comes to empowering deaf children.

“Everyone can learn sign language,” EJ Green and ASL sign interpreter from Harvard said. “Deaf people can’t learn to hear, and that’s the difference.”

For those events, people, and acts, and for the week ahead and for what we hold in our hearts, we offer these prayers of remembrance, honor, and care. May we all work to make our world a better place.

I also knew teachers who made students quake quietly in their boots. So afraid of being out of line, students confirmed to avoid being lashed out at. Interestingly this strategy worked too.

I thought it was important for students to have both kinds of teachers. Actually, all kinds of teachers. One value was that students would learn how to work with a wider variety of people.

We often think that education is about what we learn about literature, history, biology, and a host of other subjects. We often forget that education is also about learning how we work with all kinds of people and what others can teach us.

As Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

We often think of education as facts, but learning is as much an emotional process as anything. Ask most anyone who their favorite teacher was, they will more likely use emotions to describe the impact.

I loved the part of Lily Tomlin’s one-woman play, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe where she takes her alien friends to a play. They don’t watch they play. Instead, they watched the audience. And they loved it. They didn’t learn from the play. They learned from watching the play.

I thought this was a brilliant observation of how we learn and how we are human. We take it all in. On one level, I think the teacher who made students who needed fewer distractions or needed a strong sense of order was what many students needed. In part. They undoubtedly learned a lot. And a lot more than the subjects.

I think that’s true in every learning situation. I think the order helps some students, but I also think it can be a loss of a learning opportunity, as I think we need to learn how to be in all kinds of situations and environments. But I’d also add the contradiction that people need to do that as far as they could go. The same for kids who thrive in more open environments and need the opportunity to learn in a more controlled environment. I know any number of kids who came from chaos who benefitted from enrolling in the military.

I know many kids who came from a controlled environment of a small town or a conservative church who ran frantically to the chaos of the city or some other place with fewer restrictions.

I remember lots of conversations about what kind of teaching worked best, and what kind of environment students needed. Interestingly, most of the teachers I knew said students needed variety.

And the better teachers I knew all said what mattered most was that the students knew the teacher cared about them. And I think that’s the story you hear from students talking about their teachers. The students remembered who cared about them, and that happened in a lot of different ways. Often it was tied to seeing potential in the student, expectations expressed that the student remembered and agreed with, and someone who saw them as a whole person.

This makes me think of the quote from theologian Howard Thurman (Martin Luther King’s teacher), who once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go out and do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” The better teachers helped people become more alive in some way, some way that the students saw they mattered.

Often the teacher knew that learning happened in all kinds of ways and sometimes they needed to not be in the way. The hope was that with time and attention, the student would find their way, their passion, their possibilities.

I find this is a lens I’ve held throughout my life. Perhaps because I come from a lineage of teachers, and perhaps because I saw all varieties of students thrive in a variety of ways.

It also makes me think of change. And how people learn, grow, and change. It takes time.

Yet we live in a world where we want people to learn something immediately. Where if you don’t know what I know, then you’re the problem. It seems to be in our political expectations.

When I see politics these days, I see a lot of “you’re the problem.” I see a lot of quick fixes desired. I see a lot of change desired…in others, more so than ourselves.

But change involves education. It involves time. It involves meeting people where they are. It involves watching the audience and watching the play at the same time. It involves coming alive.

I can’t help but wonder if the political winners in the near and far future are the ones who live and teach Howard Thurman’s example of finding out what makes you come alive. People whose life example is guided by remembering how they make others feel. People who listen and see what’s possible.

A political observation. I think there is a desire in the current administration that the way to make change is to break everything down. I don’t think those who want to break everything down are watching the audience. But I’ve also wondered if things need to get broken before people wake up enough to say what they really want.

I think what we’ll learn instead is that we really want is a government that isn’t broken down, just one that works and serves the people. And wants all of them to come alive. We want someone who knows how to help our collective lives yet stays out of our way.

It may have taken someone(s) breaking it, for us to figure that out.

I hope.

Often it comes down to wording.

I was reminded of talking with a dear Canadian friend who told me recently that she hates the United States right now. She asked how could the United States be the way it was?

This was a woman who’d been all over the US, loved to travel down to shop in Washington State on weekends and wanted to see more.

I told her I hated parts of the United States right now too. And I love most of it. She asked me what parts I hate. I told I her hated the part of the country that didn’t understand the change doesn’t come through bullying. I hated the part that thought winning was done at any cost regardless of outcome. I hated the superiority I saw everywhere. I hated those that framed the world and people through a lens of expendability.

I told her I loved the kindness I saw. I love the curiosity I witnessed. I loved the people whose stories enriched the world because they’d learned something. I loved the people who were humble.

I asked if her if she loved everything about Canada. “More than I used to,” she replied and that made me laugh.

“You mean like the Alberta separatists? The truckers who blockaded Ottawa?” And she laughed.

My friend had never known the horrors her parents had. Her parents had been held in Japanese concentration camps in World War II. But she knew the stories. But to her it was history and not a possibility.

I told her that I had never thought we’d see internment camps in the US after World War II, yet we have them now for immigrants.

She asked me why I this had happened.

I told her I thought we’d lost the ability to honor the contradictions in others. This confused her so she asked me what I meant. I told her that the horror of wars had also benefited us. In particular, we missed required military service.

“Do you think everyone should serve in the military now?” she asked.

“Especially the ones with bone spurs,” and she laughed out loud at my answer.

I clarified, “Actually, I think everyone should be required to do some kind of national service, which could include the military. This would include finding ways for people to find some way to serve the country even if they had a disability. That serving together with people of your own age, getting direction and guidance from people who were older would be a huge benefit to our country, that it would make it easier to work with people of different opinions, backgrounds, and ideas have more respect and care for them than what we have.

She wondered if our president not serving in the military had led to his belief that they were his to use as he wished. I responded that I suspected it was a factor. It would also have given him more role models about what it meant to be an adult, to be successful, to be a part of a group and not in charge, and to be out of silo. We might be more likely to learn that models that seem contradictory to your values work too.

I told her I thought it was interesting that Canada’s response to World War II led to nationalized health care, an eventual move toward learning from your history and reparations, and more of a willingness to put aside political differences and work together.

She said that had been changing. I told her that I thought Canada and Australia and other countries had their elections affected by what they saw in the US. And what they saw was that they didn’t want to be like us. Otherwise, there might be more truckers in Ottawa.

She asked why we ended the draft. I said we made the mistake of entering into the Vietnam War, and that produced low morale especially when we saw people dying in a war we really didn’t understand why we were part of.

This made me think the curious plus of war is that by seeing people die especially if we had some connection to them made us not want war again. This makes me worried about modern day war. We’re a little more likely to go along with it if we don’t have a personal connection. (Though clearly, it’s not the only answer. Rising gas prices and lack of a clear purpose come to mind currently.)

We talked about how all of us are walking contradictions. I thought of a Modern Family episode where a doctor was incredibly caring to Cam and Mitchell yet was a menace in her car, a horrible driver. She thought of a mutual tennis friend who never seemed to be aware of his body odor and how it repelled people including her, yet he would drop everything to help out.

I thought of a perfectionist I knew who engaged in anonymous sex all the time. She thought of someone from work who didn’t like much of anyone but only she knew that.

The contradictions we live with are both global and personal. I think the ultimate contradiction is how to acknowledge it as real and understand it better.

I remember after the Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern wanted to know why the shooter had done this. But people were mad at her for asking. She wanted to know why so perhaps we could prevent something like this again. She was surprised at how many people didn’t. They were just mad at the time.

But in some ways, I think that’s the answer. Let’s get as much information as we can, and know it’s absolutely right to be mad. How do we learn to let those contradictions live side by side? Can we learn this? I think we can.

As humans, we’re clearly a work in progress. And not just in New Zealand or the United States. It’s everywhere and in each of us.One of the hardest contradictions of all is that things that seem opposite can both true. And at the same time.

Often it comes down to wording.

I was reminded of talking with a dear Canadian friend who told me recently that she hates the United States right now. She asked how could the United States be the way it was?

This was a woman who’d been all over the US, loved to travel down to shop in Washington State on weekends and wanted to see more.

I told her I hated parts of the United States right now too. And I love most of it. She asked me what parts I hate. I told I her hated the part of the country that didn’t understand the change doesn’t come through bullying. I hated the part that thought winning was done at any cost regardless of outcome. I hated the superiority I saw everywhere. I hated those that framed the world and people through a lens of expendability.

I told her I loved the kindness I saw. I love the curiosity I witnessed. I loved the people whose stories enriched the world because they’d learned something. I loved the people who were humble.

I asked if her if she loved everything about Canada. “More than I used to,” she replied and that made me laugh.

“You mean like the Alberta separatists? The truckers who blockaded Ottawa?” And she laughed.

My friend had never known the horrors her parents had. Her parents had been held in Japanese concentration camps in World War II. But she knew the stories. But to her it was history and not a possibility.

I told her that I had never thought we’d see internment camps in the US after World War II, yet we have them now for immigrants.

She asked me why I this had happened.

I told her I thought we’d lost the ability to honor the contradictions in others. This confused her so she asked me what I meant. I told her that the horror of wars had also benefited us. In particular, we missed required military service.

“Do you think everyone should serve in the military now?” she asked.

“Especially the ones with bone spurs,” and she laughed out loud at my answer.

I clarified, “Actually, I think everyone should be required to do some kind of national service, which could include the military. This would include finding ways for people to find some way to serve the country even if they had a disability. That serving together with people of your own age, getting direction and guidance from people who were older would be a huge benefit to our country, that it would make it easier to work with people of different opinions, backgrounds, and ideas have more respect and care for them than what we have.

She wondered if our president not serving in the military had led to his belief that they were his to use as he wished. I responded that I suspected it was a factor. It would also have given him more role models about what it meant to be an adult, to be successful, to be a part of a group and not in charge, and to be out of silo. We might be more likely to learn that models that seem contradictory to your values work too.

I told her I thought it was interesting that Canada’s response to World War II led to nationalized health care, an eventual move toward learning from your history and reparations, and more of a willingness to put aside political differences and work together.

She said that had been changing. I told her that I thought Canada and Australia and other countries had their elections affected by what they saw in the US. And what they saw was that they didn’t want to be like us. Otherwise, there might be more truckers in Ottawa.

She asked why we ended the draft. I said we made the mistake of entering into the Vietnam War, and that produced low morale especially when we saw people dying in a war we really didn’t understand why we were part of.

This made me think the curious plus of war is that by seeing people die especially if we had some connection to them made us not want war again. This makes me worried about modern day war. We’re a little more likely to go along with it if we don’t have a personal connection. (Though clearly, it’s not the only answer. Rising gas prices and lack of a clear purpose come to mind currently.)

We talked about how all of us are walking contradictions. I thought of a Modern Family episode where a doctor was incredibly caring to Cam and Mitchell yet was a menace in her car, a horrible driver. She thought of a mutual tennis friend who never seemed to be aware of his body odor and how it repelled people including her, yet he would drop everything to help out.

I thought of a perfectionist I knew who engaged in anonymous sex all the time. She thought of someone from work who didn’t like much of anyone but only she knew that.

The contradictions we live with are both global and personal. I think the ultimate contradiction is how to acknowledge it as real and understand it better.

I remember after the Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern wanted to know why the shooter had done this. But people were mad at her for asking. She wanted to know why so perhaps we could prevent something like this again. She was surprised at how many people didn’t. They were just mad at the time.

But in some ways, I think that’s the answer. Let’s get as much information as we can, and know it’s absolutely right to be mad. How do we learn to let those contradictions live side by side? Can we learn this? I think we can.

As humans, we’re clearly a work in progress. And not just in New Zealand or the United States. It’s everywhere and in each of us.

The interview was thought provoking, so I watched the full interview on YouTube on Sixty Minutes Overtime. I was glad I did. There were many things he said that I didn’t agree with, but he also said things that I was sure we had common ground on.

As a historian, he taught me something when he was asked about January 6^th that I thought was very true. He talked about the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 which was very contentious, making the first time for a peaceful transfer of power between parties. Jefferson was a Democrat-Republican. John Adams was a Federalist. Sasse said that after Washington most of the world believed we would devolve immediately into civil war, that the world hadn’t seen that peaceful transfer before and that it wasn’t possible. He said we should be celebrating that more and teaching that in our civics classes more.

He wasn’t sure what Adams would do, but Adams followed the model of Washington and just went home. He said politicians needed to do more of that. The interviewer said he knew some senators who couldn’t imagine leaving the Senate, that it was the most important thing they would do. Sasse wished this weren’t true, that being senator should be the 11^th or 6^th most important thing. He also argued that the Senate was not a place for deliberation, that it had become more about Instagram than making hard decisions and having good conversations. Sasse, being a historian, also reminded us that the intent of Congressional representation was that no Congressional district would be so big that every person in a district didn’t have easy access to the Congressional representative. The idea had been each district representing 25,000 people or so. Today that’s more like 700,000.

His basic theme throughout the interview was that we really don’t think about the future well. That’s an interesting contradiction for someone with likely less than a year to live. I think he’s right.

He did say that neither party had a particular handle on the future, neither could talk about or have a plan for 2030 or 2050. I thought that was right too.

He talked about how technology was going to expand so rapidly that in 3 or 13 years each of us might have a robot that built other robots for us. He talked about how we need to pay attention to Artificial Intelligence before it gets ahead of us. He said none of the young people graduating from college could enter the workforce knowing they could retire from job they trained for now because the world would change too much. He posed the question of how we plan for that reality.

I think that’s right as well.

This made me think we’ve rarely been thinking ahead like this in our history. If so, the founding fathers might well have capped the size of congressional representation to 1 representative for 25,000 people and let Congress grow as we grew.

He talked about how technology separates us and keeps us in small groups of like-minded people, that we need to be out more. He talked about how 15–35-year-olds needed more elders and less technology, more rejection and less safety. He talked about how we need to learn how to use artificial intelligence so we can use it to all our advantage and not be taken advantage of it.

One theme he didn’t mention directly, but that I inferred is that we can’t just survive the moment. We have to think ahead. In 1800 there was a lot of handwringing and belief that the US would not survive. And yet it did.

But leaders then really didn’t think what the US would be like in 1830 or 1850. The same is true today. He thought we’d make it through this moment, that the republic would survive, but we really needed to think ahead beyond instant gratification. I think the one time we might have done a little of this was after the depression with FDR. But that was a response to a moment.

So I looked at other big things we did. How might we have done the interstates differently, if we’d known it meant more extended families would be separated? How might we have done our phones differently if we’d known we’d spend more time on them now than we do talking at the dinner table? Would we have changed the draft to one of draft or national service of some kind? Could we think about automatic registration to vote? Could we work with other countries to figure out how to do health care better? Could we emphasize the need for social skills?

That begs the questions for me like, “How do we regulate AI so that it doesn’t control us?” He made the interesting point that more 15–35-year-old men have online gambling debt than are prepared to ask someone out on a date. He got me cheering when he said he wanted everyone to be a lifelong learner. We’re going to need to be.

Perhaps his most salient point was when he was asked what cancer had taught him. He said he stopped lying to himself. The lie? That he wasn’t the center of the universe.

How do we plan for that future? Because so many of our leaders and so many people live with that lie.

I think Ben Sasse has always been a deeper thinker. But cancer had accelerated that. He hates having cancer, yet he has it now with gratitude for helping him see the world differently.

Big changes make us think differently, like the depression did and it affected all of us. We may soon have “depression plus”. We know that these changes are real, but the contradiction is we don’t seem to be preparing for the possibility. Whether it be AI or cancer or depression or something else.

I agree with Ben that we’ll survive the moment. Somehow.

But I also agree we should be thinking further out because all of our time is running out and we should be responsible for those that follow. Thinking about the present requires knowing the past and thinking at the same time about the future.

Will we collectively ever learn that?

In Disney’s 1998 animated film Mulan, a young, spirited woman disguises herself as a man to take her ailing father’s place in the Imperial Army to fight the invading Huns. Assisted by the dragon Mushu, she trains as “Ping,” earns the respect of her unit and Captain Shang, saves China using her wits. While she struggles with gender role and expectation, her gender is revealed when she is being treated for battled wound. Her life is spared despite impersonating a soldier, and there are hints of romance and happily ever after. It’s a hero/heroine’s journey.

The Chinese film focuses on a gritty, tragic, and politically focused wartime story of duty, where Mulan loses comrades and sacrifices love to save her nation. There is no dragon. Mulan reveals her gender to her enemies first to deceive them, which works, and then over time reveals her gender on her terms. She simply returns home and lives as a woman. She had fought to protect her father. That’s the happily ever after.

Mulan is actually a folk hero from Northern and Southern dynasties and was possibly always a fictional character. The first written record comes in the form of a song The Ballad of Mulan from some 1700 years ago. Various versions have appeared since.

It’s hard to know how many versions of Mulan have been told over the years, though Mulan has been portrayed in every retelling as a hero/heroine. That’s what legends are made of.

It is interesting to note though some of the differences for what it means to be a hero, which Asian American young adult author Joan He wrote about in an essay, “Untold Rebellions: Character, Agency, through the Lens of Collectivism” in the book Writing In Color: Fourteen Writers on the Lessons We’ve Learned edited Nafiza Azad and Melody Simpson (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2023).

Joan He born in the US to Chinese immigrants watched both movies and was struck by how the cultures influenced the retelling of the legend. The American version of story, an individualistic tale of heroism of overcoming and being true to one’s self and what “happily ever after” means is quite different from the Chinese version of the collective tale of duty to one’s family and the reward was to be able to return to family life with her father still alive, as opposed to being sacrificed in battle.

Joan He cited Susan Collins The Hunger Games as making her think about this paradox. She loved the book and Katniss Everdeen. But what resonated for her she said was Katniss standing up to protect her younger sister and not about all the skills, guile, and luck she would need to eventually throw down an autocratic police state. A purpose for the values of family or the American hero’s journey of overcoming a collective, powerful and mostly faceless evil, focusing on how Katniss became the face of a revolution.

This made me wonder what Mulan was meant to convey (if anything) when it was originally told, by the original storyteller. We’ll probably only be able to guess.

Suzanne Collins was the daughter of a military officer and lived all over Europe, the Eastern US, and went to school in Alabama, Indiana, and New York City. She wrote for television before her first series of books was published which were inspired by Alice in Wonderland. The Hunger Games was inspired in part by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, where tributes are sent to the Minotaur on Crete and never seen again.

The stories of others we tell are also combined with our stories and the values we hold and wish to convey. They say and show something about us and the cultures we are a part of. The story of Mulan has a 1998 US lens, and a 2009 China lens. The original story has a lens from 1700 years ago or so plus whatever lenses were added in the retellings.

The stories we tell ourselves also reflect our hopes and values, and likely tell more than one story.

The Mulan movies show a contradiction of a collective and individual culture. In some ways you could argue that for The Hunger Games.

Both stories are set in times of major conflict and war. For those wanting to argue that one way of being is better than the other, I’m not sure that I think either way of moving through the world as society’s has been a riveting success. In 4000 years of Chinese dynasties there are over 3700 cited examples of war, including civil wars. Individual societies like the British and the US have their own history of violence, plundering, and taking advantage of those not expecting it.

I’m also not convinced it’s even the right frame or argument to have. We have more than one frame. But we often choose just one.

In human evolution we all have some degree of collective identity and purpose that coexists with an individual one. In fact, we have multiple collective identities, each of which shaped our individual one. And vice versa.

We’re both individualistic and collective in how we move through the world at the same time. This makes us contradictions from the beginning. And that’s a good thing.

I got a marketing email today from a company touting their new book with the question, “Do you have this year’s essential poetry collection?”

Um. No. What’s essential about it? Is it essential because I’ll enjoy reading it? Or is it essential because I would be part of the group of desirable people that owns a clearly necessary book?

Are books only sold in China for collective interest? Or does the country have a budding collection of trashy beach novels? (Hint: it does.)

And we all happen in context. We think of liberal Canada as having national health insurance. But do we know it started in Saskatchewan? One of the “Prairie Provinces” not generally seen as progressive as Ontario or British Columbia, yet in the 1940’s they saw the experience of the Depression on so many. In a culture where you might have depended on your neighbors more than you did in Toronto or Vancouver, you saw the pain more.

And the country that started nationalized health care was Germany which did so in 1883, before the two world wars they were responsible for first revving up (World War I) then outright starting World War II.

I am reminded of being in Vancouver, BC, years ago, at lunch time in the local YMCA, listening to stock brokers extol how much money they were making while checking in to make sure they had travel health insurance for their upcoming trip to the US (one guy had gone to the CAA, Canada Automobile Association, to buy some) and couldn’t understand why the US didn’t have nationalized health care. Canadians seem to understand that the health of others is as important as their own health.

The US has been more individualistic. We can be a more collective culture when threatened, but rarely is it an absolute. It still tends toward the out-for-myself way of being in the world.

Canada, on the other hand, is more unified than we’ll ever be in perceiving thanks tto a current US president whom they see as a threat to their collective identity. I don’t think anything has brought Canadians more together and helped care more for each other. Having national health insurance already made Canada more collective than the US, perhaps a true hybrid of the individualistic/collective approach to being in the world, but this changed thanks to tariffs.

Now Canadians may well have more of a sense of responsibility to fellow Canadians as opposed to being out for themselves. Cultures can shift when other cultures affect them.

Unlike the rest of the world, the US does its best to believe its destiny is its own, that we are less affected by the world and more likely to affect it. We want to be the answer, the master of our fate. Being this competitive makes us more dualistic.

In the US we rush to see and define things as either/or, a single story, whether it be political ideology, gender roles, individual or collective, or anything else. Yet limitation of dualities frustrates us and we want more options. (And then get frustrated by things not being as clear as we want and rush to find the answer often by posing things as a duality.) We are a constant contradiction.

Yet we aren’t that simple as one answer in a duality.

Do we do things out of a sense of the needs of the community? All the time.

Do we do things for ourselves? All the time.

Do we live one more than the other? Usually.

Do we at times favor one and then later the other? Often.

Do we see that sometimes a duality doesn’t serve us? Grudgingly.

Are we judgmental about this? Almost invariably.

After all, it’s expected of us. And that sometimes masks who we really, totally are. Yes, the Germans had national health care first, in the 1880s no less. But the Nazis altered Germany’s national health care to promote eugenics, racial hygiene, state control, and the superiority of the “Aryan” race. It excluded those they saw as weak.

Saskatchewan is represented now by a near unanimous Conservative party majority. But that’s different meaning than US conservative by a few shades of political degrees.

Yet like the American South and Midwest, Saskatchewan neighbors will be there for each other, and in ways you might not see in Toronto or New York City.

Perhaps we expect collective and individual or liberal and conservative to be absolute in their meaning. That’s the contradiction. They rarely are.

A story is always more than a story. It’s culture. It’s values. It’s nuance. It’s the story of others and ourselves. We contradict ourselves, perhaps because we’re human. And we’re human, we might also be at our best.

He was toweling off the sweat, sitting on one of the benches. He meticulously unlaced each shoe and with his hand removed each one, separately. He squared them up by his bench, and then, in my mind, removed each sock, one at a time, starting with the toe, and never letting the sock turn inside out. He neatly folded them on top of each other and placed them in a bag. Given these socks were no-show socks, I was even more amused by his care.

By the time he’d done all of that, I’d dried off, pulled out my clothes, applied deodorant, and gotten dressed, except for my socks and shoes.

From a separate bag, he removed a new pair of socks, though these would go above his ankles. At first I thought he was laying out his clothes before he showered, but he then went to put one on.

I shuddered slightly. He was going to put on clothes without showering. He went to put on sock. He moved deliberately but not painfully. It was clearly more about the precision. By the time I’d put on two pairs of socks, which I wear to protect diabetic feet from cracking, and my running shoes he had managed to put on one sock, which he had adjusted four times while putting on to make sure that he had aligned the sock exactly right.

A perfectionist, I wondered? Perhaps, but I assumed he would have showered, probably with immaculate sandals that he wore into the shower. He might have come in dripping from his workout, but no piece of clothing was out of place.

I went to the mirror to comb my hair into place, which even when I finished combing it, his hair would still look more military perfect than mine ever did. I took a bit of extra time, and when emerged back to gather my things, he was now working equally meticulously on his second sock.

I’m fairly certain I paused because I’d never seen this deliberate meticulousness before from anyone I’d ever encountered taking off and putting on a pair of socks. That when you added that he was sweaty and didn’t appear to be showering or even toweled off

I’d seen his socks at the running shoe store. The no shoe socks he’d taken off, which indeed you wouldn’t see with shoes on, cost 15 dollars a pair. That in and of itself was beyond me since no one would see them.

It was that at moment one of my tennis buddies walked in, wearing an Adidas ankle sock and a pushed down Champion sock. They were both black, mostly, at least, though the logos were different. Not that he cared. He did this all the time. Someone else had asked him once if he noticed they were different brands, and his response had been a shrugged, “They’re both the same color.” And that was that.

He and I talked for a moment about how tennis had gone, and then he headed use the restroom. The other guy had put on his second sock, arranging it with equal perfection. I gathered my clothes into a bag, which I’d separate into whites and colors when I got home. For now, they’d all be sweaty together.

I left, reminding myself that everyone was different. I’m sure it made complete sense to him. As much as “they’re both the same color” did to my tennis buddy.

I did however have questions.

Could someone be OCD about clothes and not sweat? Sure, why not. Was there a medical condition involved? Possibly, though he only moved deliberately when dealing with his feet. He hadn’t limped in to the locker room. He was probably in his late 40s. Perhaps he’d been in the military. But who knew.

Perhaps, he’d learned this from his parents.

It made me think of an old Bob Newhart episode where Bob had learned from his parents to the point of memorization, how to eat his food. When asked why he was slow to eat his food, he responded with, “Thirty-two times keeps your tummy from danger; then you can stay up and listen to The Lone Ranger.”

I suspected this was learned behavior from someone or someones.

But then so did my tennis buddy, who was in his 20s. No parent had told him, “Go back to your room, young man and wear socks that match,” in any way that stuck. Perhaps he had been forced, and now as an adult in control of his own laundry, was now rebelling. Perhaps his parents hadn’t cared either. Perhaps they were just glad he was wearing clothes and a college graduate with a job who didn’t live at home.

I suspected there were many possible stories and many possible reasons for these two guys behaviors.

It did, of course, make me wonder, why did this catch my attention. Why did I notice things like this?

Well, people have always fascinated me. I think that is from my parents, both of whom taught school, and dad also was journalist who loved to write. I too had learned from teaching children that I taught more ably by understanding what the motivations were.

On the other hand, in the military, you just don’t question. The standards are the same, in theory but more often than in the rest of the world, closer to reality. I’d been in ROTC in both high school and college. The rules of the military kept people, both the soldiers and those they were protecting, safter. My dad had hate the army. Yet it helped define him. It had given him boundaries when uncertainty had been the rule of most of his childhood.

My mother, who’d grown up without a bathroom, took baths in a tub, was the second woman in her family to get a college education. Her mother, my grandmother, had gotten a college degree as well. Though from the time my grandmother had been born until she got her degree the percentage of women in her college’s graduating class had doubled from 20% to 40% of the total class. She was like the majority of women graduates at that time, getting her degree in teaching. Still, she’d married a man who never learned to read. And I never heard any story that she had tried to teach him to read.

Everyone, like the sweaty man with the meticulous sock wearing and folding, has a story. It’s rich with contradictions and often based on multiple factors.

Yet some things are just part of a greater culture. The military culture requires an exactness. Appalachian culture asked people to be kind, because it was a poorer region where you depended on being a good neighbor for help.

Are there people in the military who aren’t exact? Are there people in Appalachia who are just downright anti-social or mean or both?

Absolutely. No one is a straight line.

I love figuring out what makes people who they are. I always have.

It took me years to figure out that my childhood best friend loved playing war board games because his dad had been in several real war battles in the Pacific in World War II. His father was gruff at times, though often quiet, and loved to throw the football with both his son and me. He didn’t like my creativity much, especially the time I drew up a figure of a 3-leaf clover for a passing route, which I’d complete and then go long. But he never said anything, though I do remember the eye rolls, And I always caught the pass.

And I remember when he was dying, how despite being conservative but not religious, had welcomed in the people from Hospice as he died. And that as he was dying, he talked more.

I love seeing the contradictions of people, perhaps because I see so many of my own. And I could never forget that my best friend did not want to take ROTC classes, but I did. His dad was a proud veteran. My dad not as much. My friend ended up being an aerospace engineer working for the defense industry. I am a minister and a teacher.

Life makes sense if you don’t expect a straight line.

This week I want to not only think about but revel in our contradictions, about what they bring us, enrich us, and make us whole.

Me? I’d never wear mismatched socks even of the same color. I wouldn’t spend 15 dollars on no show socks either. I wear matched socks to keep my feet from cracking. It makes perfect sense to me. I suspect to the two guys in the locker room that their own choices make perfect sense to them too—whatever line they are walking.

The stories that make up the stories are endless, and usually fascinating. I want to celebrate that in each and every one of us. Because our contradictions are part of what makes us matter in the world and to each other.

Let us enter into a spirit of care, remembrance, and prayer for the world, for our country, for those who have impact on our lives, and for the unfolding of care, innovation and discovery of life. Let us honor those people and events that have come before us as we look toward the possibilities of what may come and what we can create.

Prayers for the World

We pray the end of the Iran war, for the conflict in the Middle East, and for the removal of mines from the Strait of Hormuz. We pray for those in Lebanon trying to rebuild and return.

We pray for the people of Ukraine, which is still under attack from Russia, and where 7 people died Saturday in a bombing in the city of Dnipro. We pray with gratitude for the approval of the 106-billion-dollar loan to Ukraine from the European Union following the withdrawal of the veto from Hungary.

We pray for those affected by the mass shooting at the Teotihuacan pyramids in Mexico. Several were injured and one person, a Canadian tourist, has died.

We pray for those affected by the train crash in Denmark when two trains collided critically injuring five people with many others having lesser injuries.

We pray for the success of the conference of 50 countries meeting this upcoming week to discuss phasing out fossil fuels. While China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States won’t be in attendance, may others set the example and lead the way for the world.

We pray with gratitude for the Bank of England which will now produce new banknotes with British wildlife instead of historical figures. In addition to being a celebration of nature, the new banknotes will be harder to counterfeit.

We pray for worldwide airlines facing fuel shortages and the prospect of cutting flights. This week Lufthansa announced a cut of 20,000 flights.

We pray for those affected by the massive fire in Malaysia’s Borneo Island this week. At least 1000 homes were destroyed and over 9000 people were displaced. The homes were tightly packed together, and the affected area is one of Malaysia’s poorest places.

We pray for those affected by the 7.7 earthquake with accompanying tsunami warnings off the coast of Northern Japan. While damage was minimal, the fears of potential harm affected many.

We pray for the people of Mali where gunmen, in a possible coordinated attack, have targeted sites across multiple cities, including Bamako, the country’s capital. Explosions have also been reported. Residents have been encouraged to shelter in place while the army fights back.

We pray for an end to the antisemitism that has been rampant in the United Kingdom recently. This week multiple suspects were arrested. May all be able to worship free from violence.

We pray those who died in the Pacific on a small boat attacked by the US government that reported this was part of the war on drugs.

We pray for the growing food hunger crisis in Somali.

We pray for those onboard the fuel tanker hijacked of the Somali coast by local pirates.

Prayers for the United States

We pray for the eight children killed in the mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. Seven of those killed were children of the shooter.

We pray for those affected by the mass shooting at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, where five people were injured and one person was killed.

We pray for those wounded in the shooting in Iowa City, Iowa, this week. At least five people were injured.

We pray for those in Oklahoma where tornadoes caused significant damage to homes and communities and the Air Force Base, created power outages and water supply problems. Thankfully, only minor injuries have been reported.

We pray for those affected by the fires in Southern Georgia and Northern Florida. One voluntary firefighter has died. Many homes have been destroyed. Many pets are missing.

We pray the Dept. of Justice does not restart executions by firing squads and lethal injections as it stated this week it hopes to do.

We pray for renewable energy and its continued use. New data revealed this week that renewable energy produced more energy for use in the month of March than natural gas did. May the trend continue.

We pray for continued free speech and dialogue as Baylor University, a Baptist school, has decided for the first time to allow openly LGBTQIA+ speakers on campus for the first time in history.

We pray with gratitude for Virginia and their new governor who just signed new legislation, The Right to Contraception, which had been previously twice vetoed. The bill reinforces Virginian’s right to use “oral contraceptives, long-acting reversible contraceptives such as intrauterine devices and hormonal contraceptive implants, emergency contraceptives, internal and external condoms, injectables, vaginal barrier methods, transdermal patches, and vaginal rings.”

We pray with gratitude for the Los Angeles County School System which will now regulate the amount of screen time a child can spend each day in school.

We pray with gratitude for the Mississippi middle school students able to keep their bus from crashing when their bus driver blacked out while driving.

We pray for the release of a study of the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine on keeping people out of the hospital. The Dept. of Health and Human Services blocked the release citing concerns over methodology, though papers using the same methodology have been printed in esteemed journals, The New England Journal Medicine and Pediatrics.

We pray for Florida where new legislation prohibits local funding of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives.

We pray for the children of Texas where a recent court ruling said the state could require the Ten Commandments to be posted in school classrooms. May freedom of religion be freedom of religion.

We pray for the Southern Poverty Law Center who was indicted on federal fraud charges this week for its use of paid informants to surveil extremist groups. (The US government in many administrations has also done this.)

We pray for Virginia and its latest legislation which has been signed into law which will raise the state’s minimum wage to 15 dollars/hour by 2028.

We pray with relief that a Pennsylvania court that ruled Medicaid limitations on abortions were unconstitutional and that access to abortion should not be determined by income.

We pray with gratitude for the court ruling that struck down the administration’s regulations designed to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

We pray for the full release of the Epstein files and not an internal investigation as to the status of the Epstein files.

We pray for all who profited from insider information and then made money on predictions markets are fined and prosecuted. We pray that people do not believe that because a few people have been charged on insider information that the problem is taken care of.

We pray with gratitude for the new data released this week that 422 independent bookstores opened in the country this last year. That’s a rise of 31% from the previous year.

We pray a new Orlando attraction never opens. “Sloth World” due to open soon had 31 of its sloths die in getting them from South America to Orlando due to keeping them in a cold warehouse and other poor conditions over the last year as the attraction has prepared to open. Congressional Representative Frost has urged the USDA to investigate and block the operator of the attraction from opening.

Prayers For Those Who Have Impact on our Lives

We remember French actress Nathalie Baye (“Catch Me If You Can”) who died this week at age 77.

We remember actor Patrick Muldoon (“Days of Our Lives”, “Melrose Place”) who died unexpectantly this week at age 57.

We remember singer, Alan Osmond, oldest of the Osmond Brothers, who died this week at age 76.

We remember solo singer and Traffic co-founder, Dave Mason, who died this week at age 79.

We remember Georgia Congressman David Scott, who died this week at age 80.

We remember Grammy-winning conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas who died this week from a brain tumor at age 81.

We remember television host of “Storage Wars” Darrell Sheets who died this week at age 67.

We congratulate the community in Nunavut Canada, Arviat. Starting this summer, 1,800 truckloads of gravel are going to be laid down at the site where construction will take place in the hamlet to build the main campus for Inuit Nunangat University (INU) and a student residence. This will be Canada’s first Inuit university and the first in Arctic Canada. The decision, announced on Thursday of this week, was followed by a community celebration. A community feast was held with traditional Inuit food like fish and caribou. The event included a drum dance performance, followed by games and a square dance. The first cohort of students at the first Inuit-led university in Canada is expected in 2030.

Prayers for Unfolding Care, Innovation and Discovery of Life

We pray for the research that has discovered new ways coronaviruses infect human cells which could lead to new vaccines and treatments.

We pray for the simple two-story steel frame homes in Southern Tanzania that have reduced malaria, diarrhea, and respiratory diseases in children. The inexpensive houses replaced those made of mud with thatched roofs. The design is cost-effective and shows promise for the future as Africa’s population of 1.5 billion people is expected to double by 2070.

We pray for the new research and learning that has led to a map of how HIV interacts with human cells, opening possibilities for new treatments for people with HIV.

We pray for the newly approved gene therapy treatment for genetic hearing loss that will be made available to those in the US for free.

We pray for the work of the Carter Center and its nearly completed efforts to eradicate the world of guinea worm disease. This would be the second disease to be completely eradicated on the planet, following smallpox. The work was not done by vaccine or medicine. but by ambitious and strong public health education in Africa to prevent the spread of the disease. . Key strategies include filtering drinking water, using chemical larvicides (temephos) in water sources, and treating infected individuals by keeping them out of water to prevent contamination.

We Honor Our History on this Day, and Pray to Remember what These People and Events Have Informed Us

We honor with prayer the events and the lives of people born on this day in history May we celebrate the contributions, remember those who died, and learn from the harm that was the done:

· In 1514, Copernicus made his first observation of Saturn

· In 1564, William Shakespeare was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (his exact birth date is unknown)

· In 1607, the Virginia Company made landfall at Cape Henry.

· In 1654, Jews were expelled from Brazil

· In 1711, philosopher and historian David Hume was born

· In 1721, Tabriz, a city in Iran, is devastated by an earthquake that leveled ¾ of the city and killed tens of thousands of people

· In 1785, naturalist John James Audubon was born

· In 1792, free born African American abolitionist John Vashon was born

· In 1798, artist Eugene Delacroix was born

· In 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell in L’Aigle, France, convincing scientists that meteors exist.

· In 1865, Union troops capture and kill John Wilkes Booth, assassin to President Lincoln.

· In 1886, American singer-songwriter Ma Rainey was born.

· In 1887, Petronella van Heerden, Africa’s first female doctor, was born

· In 1888, Hollywood’s first female script writer (and author of Gentlemen Prefer Blonds) Anita Loos was born

· In 1889, Austrian English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was born.

· In 1892, African American inventor Sarah Boone received a patent for the ironing board

· In 1900, Ottawa and Hull, cities in Canada, are destroyed by fires in 12 hours. Twelve thousand people are homeless.

· In 1913, the zipper was patented

· In 1917, famed Chinese American architect I.M. Pei was born

· In 1918, four-time Dutch gold medalist for track Fanny Blankers-Koen was born. She won her medals at the London Olympics while pregnant

· In 1929, the first nonstop flight between England and India landed

· In 1933, the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany, was established by Hermann Goring.

· In 1933, Jewish students are barred from school in Germany

· In 1933, comedian, singer, and actress Carol Burnett was born.

· In 1938, Austrian Jews were required by Nazi Germany to register property

· In 1940, singer-songwriter, and producer (dubbed “Father of Disco) Giorgio Moroder was born

· In 1941, the first organ was played at a baseball stadium (Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field)

· In 1941, potatoes began being rationed in Holland

· In 1943, singer/songwriter/musician Gary Wright (“Dream Weaver”) was born

· In 1945, Germany wins its last battle of World War II at the Battle of Bautzen.

· In 1945, The Tuskegee Airman flew their final combat mission of World War II over the skies of Europe

· In 1949, Transjordan was officially renamed as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

· In 1954, The Geneva Conference began, attempting to restore peace in Indochina and Korea.

· In 1954, the first clinical trials of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine began.

· In 1960, Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor was born

· In 1962, NASA’s Ranger 4 crashed into the moon.

· In 1962, the British space programme launched its first satellite, the Ariel1.

· In 1963, the United Kingdom of Libya became the Kingdom of Libya, amending its constitution and allowing female participation in elections.

· In 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

· In 1965, actor and comedian Kevin James was born

· In 1966, a 5.1 earthquake in Tashkent, Soviet Union, destroyed most of the city and killed nearly 200 people.

· In 1967, Academy-award nominee (“Secrets and Lies”) Marianne Jean-Baptiste was born

· In 1968, students seized the administration building at the Ohio State University

· In 1970, model and First Lady Melania Trump was born

· In 1974, Malta adopted its constitution

· In 1976, Pan Am began nonstop flights between New York and Tokyo

· In 1977, actor Tom Welling (“Smallville”) was born

· IN 1977, Studio 54 opened in New York City

· In 1981, the first open fetal surgery was performed.

· In 1982, Argentina surrendered South Georgia Island to British forces

· In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

· In 1989, a deadly tornado in Bangladesh killed 1300 people and injured 12,000 others

· In 1991, the central US saw an outbreak of 55 tornadoes, including the first recorded F5 tornado. Twenty-one people died and over 300 others were injured.

· In 1994, China Airlines Flight 140 crashed at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 people. Seven others survived.

· In 1994, South African began its first multiracial election which was won by Nelson’s Mandela’s African National Congress. Mandela was elected as president.

· In 2011, “The Voice” premiered

· In 2012, rockets from the Syrian Army killed 70 people in Hama

· In 2017, “The Handmaid’s Tale” premiered on Hulu

· In 2018, Bill Cosby was found guilty of sexual assault

· In 2019, “No religion” becomes leading religious identity in the US

· In 2019, the indigenous Waorani people of Ecuador win a court case preventing oil drilling on their land

· In 2022, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that the US was out of the Pandemic Phase

· In 2024, at least 106 tornadoes destroyed homes and caused massive damage from Texas to Iowa

· In 2025, a car rammed into a festival in Vancouver, Canada, killing 11 people and injuring 30 others.

· In 2025, Pope Francis was buried

Holidays to hold this day:

• Alien Day

• Audubon Day

• Confederate Heroes’ Day - (State of FL)

• Dissertation Day

• Get Organized Day

• Hug a Friend Day

• Hug an Australian Day

• International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day

• Lesbian Visibility Day

• London Marathon

• Mother, Father Deaf Day (Last Sunday in April)

• National Dissertation Day

• National Garage Day

• National Help a Horse Day

• National Kids and Pets Day

• National No Makeup Day

• National Pet Parent’s Day (Last Sunday in April)

• National Pretzel Day

• National Richter Scale Day

• National South Dakota Day

• National Static Cling Day

• Pinhole Photography Day

• Remember Your First Kiss Day

• Richter Scale Day

· Union Day (Tanzania)—when Tanganyika and Zanzibar united into one country

· World Burlesque Day

· World Intellectual Property Day

A Reminder of Good in the World

Monika balanced on her tiptoes to get a better view of the mother and her baby. “When I get home, I’ll still be thinking about it,” she said. “Maybe even at night, while I’m sleeping and dreaming about it.”

Monika was at the Berlin Zoo. She’s 85 years old. She’s on a special tour the zoo now provides. The special tour is for people who live with dementia and their families and caregivers.

Monika is one of about 1.6 million people in Germany who live with dementia. That number is projected to reach 2.8 million people by 2050.

The Berlin chapter of Malteser Deutschland last year designed a cultural program in the capital catering to people with dementia.

“People with dementia aren’t very visible in our society. It’s still a major taboo subject, yet it actually affects a great many people and it’s important that they continue to be at the heart of society,” project coordinator Christine Gruschka said. “They have a right to participate, just like everyone else.”

Malteser Berlin’s tours for people with dementia occur at the zoo, the Museum of Natural History, Britzer Garden and Charlottenburg Palace, with hopes of expanding to other locations.

“‘Normal’ tours — so-called normal tours — are often too fast, too loud, with too many people and too many distractions,” Gruschka said. “That’s why we’ve made it our goal to create programs specifically for people with dementia: Where they still feel seen, where they feel comfortable, and where they can still show that they’re still here and can still be part of it.”

The tour skipped the majority of the zoo’s vast offerings to focus on the hippo, rhino and elephant habitats so the participants would not get too tired or overwhelmed.

“The zoo is a wonderful place for tours like this because almost everyone who grew up in Berlin has been here as a child,” Carola Tembrink, the tour coordinator said. “And especially for people with dementia, childhood memories are often still present — they just need to be jogged a bit — and that happens naturally when they see the animals, smell the air as they enter the zoo, or when they go into the rhino house and catch a different scent.”

For the caregivers and families, the tours are a lifeline. During long and sometimes frustrating days of caring for someone with dementia, a specialized tour lets them connect with others who understand the journey.

As one daughter of a mother with dementia said, “I can’t really communicate with her in a normal way, of course, but I see that when I show her something, she looks at it, she’s paying attention, and that’s important. “And it just makes me happy that she’s not just in her own world, but also in this one.”

For those events, people, and acts, and for the week ahead and for what we hold in our hearts, we offer these prayers of remembrance, honor, and care. May we all work to make our world a better place.

She could and would squabble with anyone at church. She had strategies. She was a great nagger. She could throw a tantrum with the best of them. She would walk into meetings pre-offended. She loved telling people what to do….and how.

She had admirers and allies. She also had mentees and at least wannabes.

She had people who avoided her. And some people even left the church because that wasn’t why they went to church.

She was never on the board, and during my tenure in the congregation, she rarely served on any committees.

And over the years in talking with ministerial colleagues and visiting hundreds of congregations I discovered my home congregation was not alone. This person existed in nearly every congregation I encountered, and in every gender, race, generation—every identity. For all the reasons I saw in my congregation (and probably more).

I think it’s fair to say that conflict is inevitable. Why do we see it in the world the way we do?

Well, conflict has different meaning and value for different people. I was reminded of this watching a recent conversation between the Canadian actor and writer, Dan Levy, and television host, Kelly Ripa.

Dan was describing his new television show and talking about being from a “yelly” family—one where yelling was normal. Yelling in that family didn’t mean you loved anyone less. Kelly was excited and immediately understood, getting louder as she agreed. They were both getting louder and laughing, clearly in their comfort zone. They even got to the point of Kelly saying they should spend Thanksgiving together.

(Side note: Canadians and Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in different months, but Dan agreed, undoubtedly because they were having a good time and on television in front of an audience, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Dan was thinking “Which Thanksgiving?”)

They were in their comfort zones and getting more and more comfortable with each other. Open “yelly” conflict was normal for them. It certainly isn’t for everyone. But for some people if there isn’t a “yelly” quality, they go from being suspicious to feeling threatened and unsafe. While for others yelling is unsafe.

Some of that is what we grew up with. Everyone’s “normal” is different. And when we don’t get our “normal” we often escalate whatever strategy has worked for us in our lives. A person from a “yelly” family may raise the bar and yell more in a quiet system.

I was talking at one point with a man who had been a victim of domestic violence. He was in a relationship with another man who had been verbally abusive. He had thought that if he had gotten calmer and just been reasonable, his partner would have relished the quiet like he did and would have settled down.

Instead, the quieter he got, the more his partner escalated. While on some level, the partner may have wanted a calmer relationship, he also didn’t trust it or his partner. He felt more out of control when his partner was quiet, and therefore got louder, to the point of physical violence. The conflict was familiar and therefore interpreted as making the violent partner feel more assured, even safer.

It is important to note, just because the partner had normalized loud, loud and abusive are not the same things. Not even close. But people are used to a certain level of tension, and often the more insecure they feel, the more they rush to match it by raising or lowering their own tension levels to compensate for their own expected equilibrium.

When we expect a certain reaction and don’t get it in the way we expect, this often produces anxiety. And we often can’t gauge or badly misjudge our impact on people. More often than not, we also don’t ask.

Often people come into a community because it feels familiar, even like home. Sometimes that’s about the beliefs and values, and sometimes that’s about the culture of a place. Or close. Or parts of the culture feel close. So, we try and make it even more familiar—like by getting louder (or quieter).

The member of my home congregation was great at getting louder (as well as crying). I suspect it was familiar and comfortable on some level.

But she was also well-versed in telling people what to do, how to get or make something right. Often, she even assumed people would welcome her critiques and comments. Her criticism was often perceived as nagging. At times, the criticism had a relentless quality to it, as if she said it enough times, then finally the person(s) receiving the critique would get it and do it her way.

This would repel people (and still does). Yet, it was Edwin Friedman is his book Generation to Generation that gave me a helpful perspective on the criticism. He said that criticism was a desire to be closer. He encouraged people to hear the critiques as a desire to form a deeper connection whether it be to you or to the cause, that there was a positive intent to the critique. He said the criticism was a sign someone hadn’t given up on you.

Looking back, I could the member of my home congregation saying what she said because she wanted more connection to the church, that she wanted a deeper resonance with her values in what she saw. Her mistake was that she either thought her values were superior or she didn’t even comprehend that there might have been intentional values already at work.

She was the kind of woman who would have added garlic to your pasta either without asking or asking saying it would taste better for everyone. She wouldn’t think someone might not like garlic let alone have some sort of intolerance. But her intent was to make the dish better for everyone and not think that it wasn’t there intentionally. And even if you said you were allergic, she’d relent in action but not in words, saying something like, “It would still be better with garlic.”

If someone pushed back, she would often retort she was only trying to help. Indeed, she would often start a critique with, “I’m only trying to help.” Rarely did she ask for the reason or backstory.

I would get to the point where if someone said they’d been the recipient of the person’s critiques, I would respond with, “I’m sorry it was your turn.”

This leads to my last (for today) conjecture about why we’re more likely to go after someone else in our church whom we agree with more than someone outside of our congregation whom we disagree with more.

As Loretta Ross, author of the amazing book Calling In, illustrates with the question, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Why are we more likely to go after someone we agree with 75% of the time than someone we agree with 10% of the time?”

Two immediate reasons come to mind. One, we’re more likely to have access to someone who we agree with 75% of the time. We spend more time with people whom we find more commonalities.

But perhaps more importantly, the answer is safety.

It’s safer to go after someone whom we have more commonalities with than someone we don’t. We likely know how they will respond.

When you know if someone will listen or not, absorb it or push back, how hard they’ll push back, and even what the likely outcome is, the more likely you are to keep at the conflict and voice it, often repeatedly.

When you don’t know, the world is unsafe. (Unless you believe you’re the metaphorical top dog then it doesn’t matter. You’ll go after anyone.)

But congregational life is a great place to have conflict because it’s a known container, with likely outcomes, with like-minded people. It’s amplified by the common values that we want to take to the next level, that we want the world to get.

But if there’s some perception that not everyone close to me gets it, it’s easier to imagine shoring them up,” than it is to take it the world. When you have more people on your side, then you can go outside of your world to spread your gospel, whatever your gospel is.

The sanctuary of a congregation becomes a sanctuary for conflict, a safer place.

Yet sometimes it’s easier, and better, to just stop at the 75% level of agreement and have a deeper conversation about where we agree and where we disagree. Sometimes by listening the percentage goes up.

Often our congregations are a place of safety to have fights that feel safer. It can be safer than the outside world. It can be a safer place to expect the world to be like us than the wider world is, even though both aren’t true. Because at least in the congregation people are likely 75% in agreement.

This can make the disagreements more volatile though, as the assumption is, “I thought we were on the same page.” We lapse into 75% as full agreement. It isn’t.

But even as we expect the same from others, as we criticize, as we seek a safe place to explore, we run into conflict in the places we believe we know.

And that often starts with ourselves. Because if we’re conflicted on the outside, chances are we’re conflicted in many ways on the inside. And sometimes it’s easier to fight with someone else than it is ourselves.

As he put it so bluntly, “When are half your church members going to dead? As he cites, Millennials would need to double their current attendance to approach the numbers of Baby Boomers going to church. We’ve never seen this disparity in generational attendance in our history.

It’s quite likely that in the next decade we could see a growing emptiness in our congregations. We’re just older. And this was across almost every denomination with two exceptions. The conservative Church of Christ had seven years in the last 18 years of not having a majority of Boomers in their pews. But they still were overwhelmingly Boomers.

The “rogue” denomination? The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) who have always been younger.

This intrigued me after reading and talking with colleagues who say they’ve seen spikes in church attendance, new people coming through the doors, and increased interest in church.

I’ve asked what has brought people in.

The nearly unanimous response was a need for community, to be with like-minded people, and as one person said succinctly, “loneliness.”

Following a pandemic where we stayed away from others except on social media (and thus all too often interacted with only one-dimension of humanity as well as perhaps its worst dimension), this made sense to me.

Historically, this is how religion evolved. Having read evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar’s How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures he found that this has been a primary reason for religious participation throughout history.

Certainly, I’ve seen and heard of intergenerational squabbling in church. One colleague reported that they couldn’t wait for the Baby Boomers to not be in charge of the church. Another complained about how they weren’t doing the social justice work, yet they were met with a Baby Boomer who responded that when she looked around at her city’s “No Kings” rally, the majority in attendance were Baby Boomers.

I thought of this as I was watching a report on the California governor’s race now that Swalwell is out. He had been the reported poll leader. There were no good candidates and the squabbling between the 4 Democrats left, could lead in the way California holds primaries to a run off between the two top vote getters who could be Republicans. Both of them.

Sometimes it’s easier to fight amongst those we know, than against those we don’t. (We’ll save that for tomorrow.)

But when you’re attacking your own (which happens a lot in congregational life as well as politics), who stays? Who’s left? What’s the reason people go to church? And how is this sustained?

What is the purpose of religion? I talked with several people who said the new people were coming for community and to make a difference.

That made sense. But why has religion declined so?

And is this bump permanent or more likely temporary?

I think it’s more likely temporary.

Yes, people need connection. They can also get that elsewhere in various groups, whether it be a knitting circle, a softball team, or a book club.

Yes, people need to make a difference. You don’t have to be affiliated religiously to do that. Perhaps this is what got people into the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. It was easier to try and make a difference there (and with a different set of expectations and values) than it was in a fundamentalist church.

Perhaps this is what also gets people into various social justice projects, like Habitat for Humanity or a food bank, or march for immigrants, women, or queer people.

Is that enough of a glue?

I think back to what people talked about centuries ago. When we knew less about the world. When pretty much lived in a small community that really didn’t get out much.

Survival depended on rules based on your geography that kept you alive. Wearing clothes made out of two different fabrics was wasteful. You had to encourage childbirth. Animal sacrifices to appease a violent world thought to be their own gods. Strict dietary laws.

Humans saw every other community as a threat. Then these tenants made sense. They stuck around as survival interacted with expansion. Yes, you could go and visit other places, but for you to survive you had to be superior. We saw that for centuries.

Even when superior, we saw attempts to covert those conquered to the religion of the “victors”.

Yet we take a look around now. Who wears something that is 100% cotton? There are billion more people on the planet than there were then? Where do we put them all? What do we do for ritual sacrifice these days? Could you imagine a world where you couldn’t have your food your way? Every menu seems to ask you for your allergies and dietary restrictions.

We also thought we needed God (or the gods) to look out for us. How many people believe that still? I think of the Unitarian church in England that sent 8 of its young men off to fight in World War I. They all were killed on the same day. Where was God then?

We see mass shootings, income inequality (sometimes done with the belief that their religion tells them this is okay), famine, and natural disasters that affect thousands. Where was religion when someone died and someone survived?

I don’t think as many people live with the phrase, “It was God’s will” now as they did even 50 years ago, let alone centuries.

There’s a missing depth to religion now in so much of what exists. A missing purpose beyond being with other people or making a difference.

If you don’t agree, I’m not concerned. I’ll just be watching the people parade by my window with their yoga mats because that class is where they find spirituality. Or as someone would ask me when I lived in the West Coast. “You go to church? Why? Wouldn’t you rather go for a hike on a Sunday morning?” And it wouldn’t just be one person.

What does it mean to be religious now? How do we make sense of the world?

I worry a little bit about how religion was a place to guide us as we moved through the world and now it’s become a platform to tell others how to live in the world. And we do a lot of practicing that in our own sanctuary walls. (Again, that’s tomorrow.)

Where do we find depth of our religious experience for ourselves? What does it mean to be deeply religious? To know that even when our faith is shaken, we’ll stay there and try and make sense of it and work to make it have more and newer meaning?

Journalist Michelle Norris worked on a project around race and eventually put this into a book, Our Hidden Conversations. She asked people to describe race is six words. Then, she said, she got smarter, and asked people to the meaning behind these six words.

It’s a brilliant, thought-provoking book where you get to see the commonalities and differences that people reported about how they experienced race. And the variety of answers strengthened my understanding and commitment to justice and ant-racism.

Here are some examples:

“I don’t get to be colorblind.”

“My name is Jamaal. I’m white.”

“I’m afraid to wear a hoodie.”

“Will my son come home tonight?”

“Excuse me, do you do landscaping?”

“You two are such good people.”

And I think we need the same kind of conversation about what it means to be religious. Because what it means to be religious now is I think different than it has been ever.

We need to share our thoughts, especially across generations and other identities and in my mind rediscover the third leg of the missing stool. Community will always be a need. Making a difference will always be a need. But what does each individual need to be deeply religious? (There may well be a fourth leg, which is coming for one’s kids to get religious education but that has waned significantly too.)

I think the depth happens not from a single story, not from a duality, but from when there are options. Some people will primarily come to church around one option, which will get them in the door. But what will make them stay?

Otherwise, I think we’re likely to continue to see empty pews, with occasional spikes, and the fading of religion.

I think we’re all religious. I think we all search for meaning and purpose. But if the religious walls and buildings that hold us aren’t the places for these conversations, then what future does religion have?

I think on some level we’re hoping two legs of the stool are enough. I don’ t think they are. I think we need to hear the answers to what the third leg is across the generational divide, so that we can see that we are religious and always have been.

For some reason, I’m not sure why we’re afraid to see that.

Former National Security Guard Jake Sullivan had a different spin. He responded by saying he thought what the Iranians will learn is that they can close the Strait of Hormuz.

It was fascinating to watch Bill Maher stop cold and not argue back.

But the interchange just made me think of the problems of trying to “teach someone a lesson.”

The lesson we’re trying to teach, if we’re the ones doing that, is often not what is learned.

We want the world to get what we get. If you just knew what I know, you’d be better off.

The world doesn’t work that way. Most of us don’t either.

I remember a friend who taught school who made his elementary school 5^th grade class do exactly what he said. He would make them walk the hallways until they could walk in a silent single file line. Sometimes according to other teachers his class would be in the halls for an hour.

Eventually the class could do it, but I wondered what they learned from this. And parents complained. Other teachers tried to help, but he was adamant that the students would behave.

Several of his fellow teachers huddled. One had the perfect idea. They would get him a newer children’s book. The book was Chris Van Allsburg’s Bad Day at River Bend. Then he would get it.

The story is of the pictures in a story book being uncolored and the chaos that’s created is that the illustrator doesn’t color well. It looks like a 3 year old at work in a coloring book. We learn in the story the “Illustrator” is the author’s own small child.

The teacher who thought of it said the moral of the story is that you don’t always have to color inside the lines. It doesn’t have to be perfect. So three teachers went in and got him the book.

He opened it, and thanked them. But he was puzzled why they had given him a children’s book designed for lower elementary students. This was not a book for fifth grader. But he wrote each of the teachers a thank you note as well as later thanking them in person.

But later he came to me and said, “I didn’t get it. They kept looking at me expectantly and I had no idea what they were expecting.”

“My best guess, though you’d probably get the correct answer if you asked them directly, is that they wanted you to know something like success doesn’t mean you get everything right—that you can color outside the lines.”

“You can, “he said thoughtfully, ‘but it looks better if you do color inside the lines. I thought it was the wrong gift. Still, I said thank you.”

The teachers had told me they wanted this teacher to loosen up with his kids. They wanted him to see the world of teaching as they saw it. He was never going to do that. If anything, I think the outcome of the gift was to make him drill his students more.

I could tell from his students that marching in line “correctly” was something they had to do, but it wasn’t the primary learning. The primary learning was to dislike their teacher more. I suspect a few students who grew up in homes with few rules or boundaries actually appreciated these drills to some degree. Some guidance, even when it’s not good, is often viewed as better than no guidance.

And on some level that’s true for a couple of different reasons. One, people do need boundaries. We need shared community ideals and aspirations to make living in community easier. The “clarity” also provided an easier measurement for success for the students. If they waked quietly and in line their teacher would approve. And one step further that might inspire future leaders to make their followers “walk the hallways”.

Yet more often what we see, someone else doesn’t see. They may see something similar or something very different. But they are more likely to own what they see and experience in their own eyes than by living up to the eyes of someone else.

His teachers could clearly have empathy for him. They saw a new teacher trying way too hard. But that’s not how the teacher saw himself. He saw himself as someone who needed to control the educational Strait of Hormuz. That this would prevent his kids deciding to do to nuclear option.

The harder we are to push someone to see the world as we do and/or as we think they should, the more resistance you are likely to get. While they may say they see it the way you want, they often don’t see it that way, believe it should be that way, or equate being forced as the right way to teach. Instead they see being required to mimic someone else’s certainty as being controlled, belittled, and seen as inferior.

So many in the South do not see the Civil War as being about slavery. I knew Southerners who called it the war of Northern Aggression, an invasion, an economic war, anything but what they perceived Northerners wanting them to get. They could tell the right answer, but I wasn’t always sure they believed it. I knew several white Southerners growing up who interacted more humanely with African Americans than they did with White Northerners.

I think we’ll see the same with Iran.

I think too about the Iranians who I heard speak publicly on American television that it would be up the Americans to set them free from the controlling regime. They begged the president to come in and liberate them.

He hasn’t. And he certainly hasn’t liberated them in the way they would like to see the world.

I would argue that if you want someone to color inside the lines as you see them, they are more likely to do it if they aren’t forced to do it. Especially when they don’t have the same skills or experience. Especially when the teaching is designed to say I know more.

Children expect the teacher and other adults to know more. But they also don’t want the adults to forget that they are trying, that they know something themselves, and that the child needs to feel in some control of their environment.

I’ve often wondered what became of that teacher. I’d also love to know what the students remember about him. Was it what he wanted? Was it what they wanted?

If you’re marching in the class hallway for hours, or even if you’ve sent a modern-day armada to the Straits of Hormuz, chances are you won’t get what you want. Because they’ll never learn what you want them to learn.

Instead, they’ll learn about control. And keep fighting that battle all of their lives. I’m not sure we were interested in teaching Iran that.

If you have any doubts, look no further than Hungary. They are now drawing a new picture. It will be fascinating to see how they color it. Let’s ask them to show us.

Her mother watched her do that and said absolutely nothing. I wondered if she would say something about it later.

I do remember when my sister did that it upset my mother enough that my mother was appalled and got, in a move that was rarely witnessed by other human beings, stern. I’m sure my sister never forgot that. I know I haven’t.

Tonight, however, I only wished for a scorecard. Someway to hold up an “8.45” for the world to see and to be able to say that she “hadn’t stuck the dismount.”

This mostly made me think about how things change generationally. Not only with the child do a cartwheel. The mom of this gymnast had on pajamas and slippers.

I’ve seen more and more of that. On Sunday in the grocery store I saw at least 4 people there in slippers. While not every time, I’ve seen many people at the groceries in pajamas.

Our standards change. Seeing the cartwheel reminded me of the first time in the 1990s that I was upgraded to first class. I was dressed in a golf shirt, khakis, and tennis shoes. As I boarded the plane, the flight attendant asked me appraisingly, “First class? Are you in first class?”

I had to show her my ticket and then was able to pass her. Today, wearing those same clothes, I might have been the best dressed person in the cabin. Flying at one time required wearing one’s “Sunday Best.”

We used to really place value on appearances.

I think we still do, but it’s not about our physical appearance, how we look, how we dress.

It’s more about how we appear to be smart, or in some places, appear to disdain being smart.

I just finished It’s on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society’s Deepest Problems by Nick Chater and George Lowenstein.

It’s a book that encourages false competition. If you’re smart enough, you’ll pick the right Medicare plan. If you’re thoughtful enough, you’ll recycle correctly and end the garbage and waste problem. You need to know enough to decide what retirement plan is best for you.

Collectively, we aren’t. But if I can convince you individually you need to be smart enough to make the right choices, then I don’t have to change the system that benefits corporations.

I can remember having to choose health insurance every November and thinking I had enough knowledge and perhaps even more importantly time to make the right and informed decision.

This is a great way to be able to say later, most likely indirectly, it’s your fault. If you’ve chosen a high-deductible plan to save money on your health insurance because you’re younger and healthy you might (emphasis on might) be correctly playing the odds. But the reality is twofold. You’re making a guess based on information and needs beyond your health (you’re making it on your current financial situation). And two, you shouldn’t have to make this choice. Because the people making money off your health care, make more money off your bet is wrong.

Then you’re likely to hear that the countries that do have socialized medicine can’t afford it. It’s breaking their system. And somehow that’s more important than having people get sick and die.

And chances are the person telling you to make the best option may not even realize that they are saying this to make someone else money. They may be genuine in wanting to help you make the best choice for you, thinking the system is as just as it could be.

And it is not.

We have to be “smart” enough to address the system and not make the individual feel like they aren’t smart enough to make the right choice. Or to convince them they have when it does work out.

Same with guns. How often have you heard, “Guns don’t kill people. People do.”

Gun deaths in Australia dropped significantly following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement, falling from 2.9 per 100,000 people in 1996 to roughly 0.88–0.9 per 100,000 by 2018-2019. This shift included an accelerated decline in firearm suicides and a near elimination of mass shootings. However, gun ownership has risen again, with over 4 million registered firearms.

In 2023, 46,728 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., making it one of the highest annual totals recorded. Roughly 58% were suicides and 38% were murders, with firearms remaining the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teenagers. While gun homicides declined in 2024, gun suicides have hit record levels. The US has between 12 to 16 times the number of gun deaths more than Australia does.

We dread not having enough money for retirement, but what help do people get? There’s an assumption of support. But pensions support. People knowing which plan to pick is not support. If they have a plan to pick.

I knew someone who got scammed out of money because they had gotten an email saying that someone they knew was being held captive. We blame the scammed before the scammer. My sister walked in on my mother (who lives with dementia) on the phone with someone as she’s giving out her credit card number.

We need better systems and systems that are smart for us and not against us.

We see it in our antiquated election system. We’re watching a system trying to change elections because it claims that individuals commit fraud and the fraud they are committing is to protect from fraud. It’s crazymaking. And relies on people to trust systems designed to benefit the few and not everyone.

Let’s take one system: Health Care.

I’d love to see countries who have nationalized health care work publicly, transparently, and strategically together to strengthen their health care and encourage and support the rest of the world to move toward it.

I think we’re smart enough to realize that working together toward systems that support everyone is a better way to solve problems than expecting every individual to figure it out.

How often do we give an individual solution to a problem that is systematic? And how often do we blame a messenger because they are our access to a system?

When Australia reformed its gun laws it did so thinking of all the people not just the gun owners.

Australia changed its laws to reflect its values.

In some ways we’ve changed how we feel about people dressing on airplanes or grocery stores, perhaps people doing cartwheels in grocery stores.

But we still think individuals should be more intelligent than systems designed to make money on people who don’t know how to navigate them.

I keep wondering if we’re smart enough to change that. Or will we continue to do the mental gymnastics that makes us believe it is up to the individual to figure it all out?