Check in on your federal worker friends.

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.“

Some who were dying are dying still, suffering their way to a lingering death. And the dead stay dead. And the mourners cry out, "How long, O Lord?"

~Allen Verhey, The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus

. . . to celebrate when the dead are raised. But the poor are oppressed still. Wars and enmity continue. There is little mercy to be seen. Some are beaten down and crushed by their suffering still. Some who were blind are blind still.
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They are eager for joy, ready to celebrate merrily the outrageously good news of such a future, ready to dance. They are hungry for justice, thirsty for peace, longing or the rule of mercy. They are eager to delight in the sight of the blind, to rejoice when the sick are healed, . . .
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of God's future, and their eyes fill with tears because they see it challenged and contradicted in the present. Their spirits ache for the coming of the kingdom Jesus announced, the future he made present in his words of blessing and his works of healing. It is because they hope that they mourn.
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Who are the mourners in the Sermon on the Mount?

"The mourners are visionaries who ache with the wounds of the world's sadness . . . . (they are) those who have heard the good news of God's good future and weep because it is not yet, still sadly not yet. Their eyes have caught a glimpse . . . 👇🏼

I probably think about Stonehenge too much. But I keep coming back to the notion that Neolithic people spent at least 50 generations on this massive project because it was desperately important to them. What is desperately important to us?

What stones could we agree to move together?

What would we be willing to unite around as a society, and then pass the task on to our children, and then to their children, until it was finished? What costs would we assume? What risks?
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What is our Stonehenge for the modern era? To what will we devote intergenerational time and treasure to achieve? Solving global warming? Interstellar travel? What if we decided that every single human should have a safe home or sufficient food?
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What moves people to devote so much precious time and energy to this, when survival itself is at stake? Time moving the stones is time not hunting, time not harvesting, time not preparing for winter. Moving the stones puts so many other things at risk. But still they move the stones.
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How does a society without written language transmit that vision down through so many layers of progeny? What stories did they tell their children? What songs did they sing?
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What would it mean for a society to take on a project so ambitious that their great-great-grandchildren won't live to see the result? To have a future vision of fifty lifetimes?
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Men would have lived and died moving the stones, then shaping the stones, lifting the stones into place. Fathers would have passed the work on to their sons, who passed it on to their sons. How many sons? How many fathers?
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Today it's understood that the Altar Stone was transported 50 miles from the Senni Beds to the Salisbury Plain, and the bluestones were brought from the Preseli Hills 150 miles away. How long to move those stones, to slide them along rolling logs or pull them with ropes?
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Mostly, I think about the fact that it took around 1500 years to bring it to its final form, and that the lifespan of a Neolithic man was, on average, between 20-33 years. How many generations is that?
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Some men probably do think constantly about the Roman Empire. That could be true. I don’t know. Me? I think about Stonehenge. I think about Stonehenge a lot.👇🏼

Our Nativity scene is packed away, stored safely with the Advent wreath and the other decorations. We've taken down the bows, turned off the lights. Christmas is over. The work of Christmas begins.

The holiday cyber shenanigans have begun! If you get texts like this, do NOT click on the link. The U.S. Postal Service is not texting you from the Philippines to tell you about a package.

Our pup is a bit of a drama queen, so of course she kicked off Thanksgiving by being sick on the downstairs carpet at 5:30 this morning. Currently feeling better and watching the National Dog Show to see what the other dogs are up to this year.

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper Now I let it fall back in the grasses. I hear you. I know this life is hard now. I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of it? Love is for the ones who love the work.

A lovely little poem by Joseph Fasano. There's no condescension in it, no "what's wrong with these kids today," just an acknowledgment that they're a little overwhelmed and some advice from the longer perspective that sometimes the shortcuts offered to us don't lead to any place we want to be.

Ideas that might serve us better. New ways of being in the world. I'm also going to talk about how important it is to love our neighbor, show compassion, and be gentle with each other. Sound OK? Then let's move forward together. /4

It's hard for humans to change the way we think about the world. While we're on here together, if you're willing, I'd like to disrupt some of those faulty frameworks and suggest some new stories, new ideas that we can use when thinking about the world, ourselves, and the people around us. (3/4)

how we should relate to others, and even about who God is and what THAT relationship should be like. The problem is that our experiences are very subjective, so some (many?) of our frameworks are built on faulty data. AND those frameworks are pretty ingrained. Hard to let go of. (2/4)

We all use heuristics - little mental frameworks - to help us make quick judgements, make decisions, and find solutions to problems. Those frameworks get built over time based on our experiences; they are the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what the world is like . . . (1/4)

“To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time.” ~Henri Nouwen

"The way of peacemaking given us may be something so small that it seems hardly worth doing, but it is these small offerings which build your reflexes for the larger ones." ~Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season

“Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.”⠀
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― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

that glow has begun to light the world. Hold onto hope. Love your neighbor. Keep the faith. Pray for peace. And fan the embers of love into flame.